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DRAMATIC MOMENTS IN 
AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 




BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
THE FOUNDER OF AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 



DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

IN AMERICAN 

DIPLOMACY 

BY 

RALPH W. PAGE 




FRONTISPIECE 



Garden City New York 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

1918 



Copyright, 1918, hy 

DOUBLEDAY, PaGE & CoMPANY 

All rights reserved, including that of 

translation into foreign languages, 

including the Scandinavian 



,R 28 



/i K c \ J i'j 






FOREWORD 

The public apathy In regard to our foreign policy 
and the cheerful indifference shown by the majority 
of our people towards the Diplomatic Service has 
had a baleful influence upon our country. Even 
since the disclosures of Germany's designs in the 
world war have turned attention violently towards 
the realm of world politics, and thrust the slumber- 
ing questions of our international rights and duties 
into the glare of newspaper headlines, the discussion 
thus aroused in our press and in our legislatures has 
revealed a comprehensive igngrance of the first prin- 
ciples of our foreign relations. It displays a total 
disregard for more than a century of painstaking 
upbuilding by that successful and farseeing body — 
the American Diplomatic Corps. 

It is not and could not be the object of this volume 
to give a chronological history of the diplomatic 
achievements of the United States. My purpose is 
rather to present in simple form a few of the most 
striking incidents in the service — to picture the out- 
standing figures and big dramatic actions in our 
dealings overseas which should be common knowl- 
edge to all Americans, but is not. 

I have no fear that the story will be old or stale. 
Part and parcel of our very life though they be, I 
venture that a large proportion of both the actions 
and the principles set forth will be not only new 



FOREWORD 

but amazing to most readers. Yet they are the A 
B C of American diplomatic history. I claim no 
historical erudition whatever. This book adds not 
a syllable to the literature of the subject, and it is 
not intended to. 

It is hoped that perhaps a narrative, told rather 
in the language of the man on the street than in the 
dignified diction of the historian, and setting forth 
the adventurous and dramatic episodes in the lives of 
our envoys, the plots they have discovered, the Em- 
pires they have defied, the kingdoms they have 
acquired, may help to create some interest in this 
most vital matter. It is hoped that it may, for in- 
stance, bring some appreciation of the mutual inter- 
dependence between Great Britain and America. If 
the casual reader was aware that under the guiding 
hand of our Revolutionary heroes we had three times 
before joined forces with the Navy of Great Britain 
to face the predatory forces of despotism, and had 
been defended by that Navy from that day to this, he 
would be better prepared to debate "the freedom of 
the seas." 

While this book does not pretend to give even a 
cursory review of American diplomacy, I hope that, 
having taken this much of a glimpse into our world 
situation as it has developed, the reader may acquire 
an appetite for the real facts in the case, for future 
reference at the primaries, and elsewhere. 

R. W. P. 

Pinehurst, N. C. 
Feb. 8, 1918. 






CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Foreword . . v 

CHAPTER I 

Benevolent Neutrality S 

King Louis's Private Messenger Makes a Discovery in Lon- 
don — Beaumarchais, America's First Friend, Writes a Letter 
— A Secret Conference of State in Philadelphia — Timothy- 
Jones, Alias Silas Deane, the First American Diplomat — 
The Continental Army Saved by "Roderique Hortalez" — 
Some Revolutionary Correspondences Showing that All is 
Not Neutral that Protests. Clandestine Diplomacy. 

CHAPTER II 
"Entangling Alliances" 2S 



Enter One of the Most Extraordinary Men that Ever Lived — 
Paris Taken by Storm — An Ambassador, Secretary of State, 
War, Navy, and Treasury All in One — A Courier Arrives in 
Paris with Startling Intelligence — Comedy of English and 
French Spies — Benjamin Franklin and Louis XVI Sign the 
Treaty of Alliance — lOur Obligation to France. 

CHAPTER III 

Fighting for Life. The Birth of a Nation 38 

The European Cabal Against Democracy — The United 
States Sends out an Ail-American Team — Benjamin Frank- 
lin Plays Fair and Wins the Applause of His Opponents — 
John Jay Discovers a Plot and Throws His Instructions to 
the Winds — The Part Played by the Intercepted Dispatches 
of Marbois and the Secret Mission of Reyneval in Ameri- 
can Independence — The Foundations of the Anglo-Saxon 
Solidarity. 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER IV 

"Traditions of the Service" ..... 56 

Gouverneur Morris Takes a Hand in the French Revolution 
— His Memorandum to the King — The Man from Home 
Plans the Escape of Marie Antoinette — The Affair of the 
King's Money and Papers — Coaching a Despot to Play Re- 
publican — The Embassy a Haven for Condemned Aristos — 
Invaded by the Commune — The Minister Arrested — All the 
Ambassadors Leave — "Better My Friends Should Wonder 
Why I Stay Than My Enimies Inquire Why I Went 
Away" — Morris Stands by His Post of Danger — The 
King's Legacy Delivered in Vienna. 

CHAPTER V 

"Traditions of the Service" .... 66 

P:^lihu Washburne, Ambassador for the World During the 
Siege of Paris — The Commune Again — History Repeated — 
The Empress Eugenie Rescued from the Revolution by an 
American — The Coming of the Prussians — All the Foreign 
Envoys Pick Up Their Hats in a Hurry— The Deluge of 
Victims — The Secret Messenger of the Royal Family — The 
Gold of Prince Murat — Counsellor to the Republic — Vive 
VAmerique — An Embassy Over a Mine and Under a Barri- 
cade. 

CHAPTER VI 

The Bearding of Bonaparte. A Lesson In 

Sea-Power 73 

Napoleon Steals Louisiana from the "Prince of Peace" and 
Organizes an Invasion of America Out of His Victorious 
Armies Led by Marshal Victor of "The Terrible Regi- 
ment" — Thomas Jefferson, Pacifist, Turns a Political Somer- 
sault — Rufus King Holds a Momentous Conference in Lon- 
don — Robert Livingston Throws a Challenge in the Face 
of a Great Conqueror — Napoleon in His Bath-Tub Makes 
History — James Monroe Goes to Purchase a Town and 
Returns with a Kingdom — America Saved by the British 
Fleet. 



CONTENTS ix 

CHAPTER VII 

The Humiliation of Impotence. A Study 

In Piracy 96 

The "Shadow of God" and "Emulator of Alexander" Writes 
a Dispatch to "The Amiable James Monroe, Emperor of 
America" — Courtly Frightfulness vs. Truculent Pacifism — 
John Adams has a Pleasant Chat with a Pirate in London — 
An Algerian Price List of American Sailors — Boston Ma- 
riners Left in Turkish Slavery — The Diplomatic Triumph of 
a Courteous Murderer — Blackmail the Alternative of a 
Navy — The Portrait of George Washington — Stephen 
Decatur Demonstrates the Persuasive Value of Gunpowder 
in Diplomatic Discourse. 

CHAPTER VIII 

The Battle for Democracy. An Anglo- 
Saxon Inheritance 117 

George Canning Reveals a Plot for the Extermination of 
Democracy — Richard Rush Sends James Monroe a Literary 
Bomb-Shell — The Emperors of Europe Combine for Con- 
quest of America — The Duke of Wellington Proves a Tartar 
— England Makes a Proposition — Thomas Jefferson Proposes 
to Marry the British Fleet— The Solid Front of the Anglo- 
Saxon — James Monroe Throws Down a Challenge to Roy- 
alty — Ambitions Sunk in the Waters of Trafalgar. 

CHAPTER IX 

Publicity vs. Duplicity. The Intrigues of 

an Emperor 130 

A Mysterious Stranger Appears at the Paris Consulate with 
Proof of an Imperial Plot — The Iron-Clad Rams of Na- 
poleon III— The Death Knell of the Fleet and the Threatened 
Bombardment of New York — The Intrigues of an Emperor 
—The Fallacy of Neutrality— The Diplomatic Methods of 
John Bigelow — A Cunning Ruse— The Planted Dispatch— 
The Collapse of the Conspiracy. 



X CONTENTS 

CHAPTER X 

The "Trent" Affair 150 

Righting an Old Wrong — Introducing an Ultimatum, In- 
cluding the Story of a Hold-Up at Sea — Two Ambassadors 
Captured and Imprisoned in Fort Warren, Boston — A Les- 
son in International Law Proves an Example of Interna- 
tional Joke — A National Celebration — A National Indigna- 
tion — A National Retraction — Abraham Lincoln's Way — 
Anecdotes vs. the Rattling Sabre — A Conference of State — 
Salmon P. Chase States a Principle. 

CHAPTER XI 
Coaching China 167 

The Everlasting Problem of "The Inferior Race." Conflict 
of "Manifest Destiny" and "The Square Deal" — A Crisis in 
the Orient — The "Powers" Rig an Action Against the Celes- 
tial Kingdom, Backing the Advance of the Caucasian Drum- 
mer — Anson Burlingame, Back Bay Politician, Takes the 
Case of China — The Fate of a Continent in His Hands — An 
Ambassador to All the World — His Treaty with Seward — 
A Convention with Lord Clarendon — ^The Triumphant Dip- 
lomatic Conquest of Two Emperors and the Iron Chancellor. 

CHAPTER XII 

"A Duty to Humanity." The End of an 

Empire 196 

The Diplomacy of the War with Spain — The Crime of Na- 
tional Pride and Procrastination — The Verdict of History — 
The Plight of Cuba — Revolution Engineered in New York — 
Mutual Cruelties — American "Pirates" — Cleveland's Firm 
Hand — Woodford vs. Sagasta, a Triumph of Fair Play- 
Concessions Made by Spain — "Home Rule" — Removal of 
Weyler — "Autonomy"— Revocation of Reconcentration — Isa- 
bel's Despair — The Intervention of the Pope — Final Conces- 
sions and Armistice — "Remember the Maine" — An Inter- 
cepted Insult — The Recalled Minister and the Fateful Mes- 
sage to Congress — ^A Tribute to Spanish Courtesy. 



CONTENTS xi 

CHAPTER XIII 

The Coup d':1&tat. The Inside Story of Pan- 
ama 2^7 

The Man Behind the Revolution— Room 1162, Waldorf-As- 
toria, The Liberty Hall of Panama — Bunau-Varilla Goes 
Scouting in Washington — The Three Horns of the Panama 
Dilemma — Reading the Future Actions of the Government — 
Playing with Destiny — A Kingdom for a Warship — Victory 
on the Isthmus — "Time is of the Essence" — Intrigue and 
Procrastination Squelched by Theodore Roosevelt — The Dra- 
matic Finish in John Hay's Residence. 

CHAPTER XIV 

Some Lessons in Civility . . . . . . 260 

Premonitions — The King of Prussia's Precious Doctrines in 
1823 — The Oppressed Revolutionists of Germany — Debut of 
the Prussian Bully in Samoa — The Emperor's Fatal Birth- 
day — The Advent of the Famous Formula: "Impossible Ul- 
timatum, Instant Defensive Invasion, and Annexation'^ — 
Leary of the Adams Takes a Hand— Schrechlichkeit Foiled 
by Hurricane — "The Organization of Failure in the Midst of 
Hate"— Why the Kaiser Did Not Take Uncle Sam "By the 
Scruff of the Neck"— "If You Want a Fight, You Can Have 
It Now"— Roosevelt Calls the Teuton Bluff— A Case of Arbi- 
tration—Designs on the Caribbean— An Opinion by John 
Hay. 



DRAMATIC MOMENTS IN 
AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 



CHAPTER ONE 

BENEVOLENT NEUTRALITY 

King Louis's Private Messenger Makes a Discovery 
in London — Beaumarchais, America's First Friend, 
Writes a Letter — A Secret Conference of State in 
Philadelphia — Timothy Jones, Alias Silas Deane, the 
First American Diplomat — The Continental Army 
Saved by "Roderique Hortalez." — Some Revolution- 
ary Correspondence Showing that All is Not Neutral 
that Protests. Clandestine Diplomacy. 

SECRET diplomacy is almost a lost art. 
The Hohenzollerns still affect a fond- 
ness for this most thrilling and romantic 
pastime. But the Hohenzollern ministers 
have not been able to achieve the dizzy heights 
of deception and the infinite finesse and deli- 
cate touch which were the characteristics of the 
fine game of intrigue and counter-plot as con- 
cocted in the mystic chambers of subtle cardi- 
nals and imaginative ministers of the Talley- 
rand period a hundred years ago. Then a 



4 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

government envoy had as many disguises as 
Stillman Hunt, the detective, and might be dis- 
closed any time as his enemy's chief of staff, or 
his confidential secretary. 

In 1775 a temporary peace prevailed in the 
world. The French Ambassador in London, 
entirely surrounded by spies, went his innocu- 
ous and pompous way. But meantime a singu- 
lar individual was in London laying the train 
of the Bourbon revenge for the loss of Canada. 
In subtle and successful guise he was accom- 
pHshing precisely what the Prussian, Kiihl- 
mann, attempted in 1914. He spent his time 
singing duets with the Minister for Foreign 
Affairs and displaying an amazing talent in fri- 
volity, in droll stories, in desperate and amus- 
ing nocturnal intrigues. He was a play- 
wright of the first water by way of diversion; a 
plotter of inordinate devices and imagination, 
a master of dramatic language on all occasions, 
and absolutely without reputation. 

His history as an agent of the French kings 
is more replete with masquerades, adventure. 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 5 

ridiculous and dangerous situations, clandes- 
tine assignations, deadly secrets, and compli- 
cated intrigue than any novel ever written. 
Single handed he had recovered the notorious 
libel "Memoirs of Madame du Barry" from a 
colossal scoundrel in London, after a brigade 
of French secret police had failed in the most 
humiliating manner. Bearing the king's com- 
mission in a gold box hung around his neck he 
had set out from Nuremburg on the trail of a 
Jew who held for sale scandalous secrets of 
Marie Antoinette — the living counterpart of 
those' Gascon characters whose incredible ad- 
ventures fill the pages of French fiction. He 
fell upon his prey at the entrance of the forest 
of Neustadt. He was in turn attacked by 
three assassins. He tottered into the court of 
Vienna and was held there in prison a year as 
a dangerous liar. But he saved the papers. 
And now as our history opens he was once 
more in London, transacting the tortuous and 
lurid diplomacy of the Bourbon Court. He 
was there negotiating with another secret agent 



6 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

of the court for a box of letters of Louis XV, 
said to incriminate the French nation beyond 
recall. Recollect that this other agent was the 
Chevalier d'Eau, who had originally gone to 
the Russian Court disguised as a woman, and 
who at this time, to the scandal and astonish- 
ment of Christendom, was declaring that in 
fact he was a woman, and you will perceive 
what a funny, dreadful, and entertaining char- 
acter this fellow was. 

His name was Pierre Augustin Caron de 
Beaumarchais. So much for one side of this 
actor — the ridiculous and entertaining side pre- 
sented to Lord Rochfort and the American 
Conmiittee on Secret Correspondence. The 
other side is painted thus by a great French 
historian : 

"A man of ardent and daring mind, of rest- 
less and stormy renown, of questionable char- 
acter and of prodigious activity. * * * The 
heir presumptive of Voltaire and the success- 
ful conqueror of the Maupeou Parliament." 

Unknown to his own ambassador, totally 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 7 

without standing or presentable authority, lia- 
ble to be repudiated by his master and to have 
"his throat cut like a sheep" for any mistake or 
discovery, this capable vagabond manipulated 
the strings of the machine which developed into 
the most powerful influence for fair practice 
among nations ever yet seen in the world — 
American diplomacy. He not only believed 
the world to be a stage, but wrote the piece 
himself, and acted it; performing both func- 
tions in the most intensely dramatic and inter- 
esting style. 

So it inevitably happened that he crossed the 
trail of Arthur Lee, an agent of the Conti- 
nentals in England in the early days of our 
Revolution. King Louis was shortly in- 
formed what action a really wise king should 
take. The French were at peace with Eng- 
land, to be sure. And there were certain pre- 
vailing ideas upon the subject of neutrality, 
then as now. But to a mind as versatile as 
Caron's such impediments are negligible. See 
how it is done. 



8 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

(Translation of Undated Memorandum of 
Car on de Beaumarchais, Adven- 
turer at Large) 
To The King Only 
Sire: 

When considerations of State impel you to 
extend a helping hand to the Americans, pol- 
icy requires that Your Majesty proceed with 
such caution, that aid secretly conveyed to 
America may not become in Europe a brand to 
kindle strife between France and England. 
Above all, it is the part of prudence to be 
certain that the money cannot possibly pass 
into other hands than those of your choice. 
Moreover, since the present state of the 
finances does not at once permit of as great an 
expenditure as events seem to require, it is my 
duty. Sire, to submit to yom- judgment the fol- 
lowing plan, having for its principal object, 
under the semblance of a purely commercial 
affair, to remove all suspicion that Your 
Majesty or your Majesty's Council are at all 
interested in the matter. 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 9 

This plan, in execution, unites with many- 
other advantages the power of retarding or 
accelerating the course of these supplies as 
your prudence may dictate, and according as 
the situation of the Americans becomes more 
or less pressing, with the result that these aids, 
wisely administered, will serve not so much to 
terminate the war between America and Eng- 
land, as to sustain and keep it alive to the detri- 
ment of the English, our natural and pro- 
nounced enemies. 

Let us consider the details of the scheme. 
The unvarying impression of this affair to the 
majority of the Congress, should be the delu- 
sion that Your Majesty has nothing to do with 
it but that a company is about to entrust a cer- 
tain sum to the prudence of a trusted agent to 
furnish continuous aid to the Americans, by 
the promptest and surest methods * * * in 
exchange for returns in the shape of tobacco. 
Secrecy is the essence of all the rest. 

Your Majesty will begin by placing one 



10 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

million at the disposal of your agent, who will 
style himself Roderique Hortalez & Company, 
this being the signature and title of the firm 
under which I have agreed to conduct the en- 
tire business. One half of this sum, changed 
into moidores or Portuguese pieces, the only 
foreign money that passes in America, will be 
immediately forwarded thither. 

Roderique Hortalez intends to use the re- 
maining half million in procuring powder, and 
conveying it without delay to the Americans. 
Instead, however, of buying this powder in 
Holland, or even in France, at the current 
prices of 20 or 30 sols tournois a pound, the 
price at which the Dutch hold it, or even higher, 
when supplying the Americans, the real device 
of the operation consisting as Roderique Hor- 
talez hopes, in secretly procuring, with the 
sanction of Your Majesty, all necessary pow- 
der and saltpetre of your Registrars, on a basis 
of from five to six sols a pound. 

Before terminating this paper I wish to 
hazard an idea suggested during its compo- 



IlSr AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 11 

sition, namely, that it would be a pretty thing 
to aid the Americans with English money. 
Neither is this difficult. 

It would suffice should Your Majesty, 
adopting an English usage that exacts a tax 
of 75 per cent, ad valorem on all French 
vehicles entering England at Dover, decree 
that in future all foreign vehicles and horses 
landed at our ports shall pay a tax equal to 
that levied on ours when entering England. 

By putting in practice this conceit. Your 
Majesty would have the pleasure of using for 
the relief of the Americans the very money 
squeezed out of the English, and this seems to 
me to be quite an agreeable consideration, and, 
so to speak, like planting a few flowers amid 
the dry w^aste of explanations of the output, 
return, and profits of the commercial capital 
of the firm of Hortalez, of which Your Majesty 
is about to become the sole proprietor. * * * 
Caron de Beaumarchais. 



12 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

From this document dates the dawn of 
American diplomacy and the tide of events 
leading to support, alliance, independence, and 
greatness. The next exhibit proves that the 
King and his counsel took the advice to heart — 
not forgetting the precautions of secrec3^ On 
May 2, 1776, the Minister for Foreign Affaii^s 
sent this illuminating letter to His Majesty: 

Sire : 

I have the honour of submitting to your 
majesty the writing authorizing me to furnish 
a million of lives for the service of the English 
Colonies, if you should deign to ratify it with 
your signature. I add to this. Sire, the draft 
of the reply which I mean to make to M. de 
Beaumarchais. If your majesty should ap- 
prove of it, I beg that it may be returned to 
me without delay. It shall not go forth in my 
handwriting, nor in that of any of my clerks 
or secretaries; I will employ that of my son, 
which cannot be known; and although he is 
only in his fifteenth year, I can answer posi- 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 13 

tively for his discretion. As it is of conse- 
quence that this operation should not be de- 
tected, or at least imputed to the government, 
I propose, if your majesty consents, to call 
hither the Sieur Montaudoin. 

And meantime it happened that a genial 
Frenchman of leisure quite casually turned up 
in Philadelphia calling upon his old friend 
Francis Daymon, librarian of the Philadelphia 
library. He came from England and was 
filled with curiosity and good will. What was 
more natural than that this visitor, M. Bon- 
vouloir, should be introduced to the famous 
philosopher, Benjamin Franklin, who was a 
member of the American Secret Committee on 
Correspondence with Foreign Powers? He 
showed such an interest in the struggling Con- 
gress that the members of the Committee met 
him in a secluded place after dark, each ar- 
riving by a different road. He told them that 
he could promise, offer, and answer for noth- 
ing, and that he was merely acting as a well- 



14 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

disposed individual; but that he believed 
France wished them well and that he would 
give them the advantage of his large acquaint- 
ance in Paris, to insure any requests they 
might have to present at court. 

Thereupon, our forefathers decided to send 
an agent into the nest of intrigue at Versailles 
to get what they could from the French. Our 
forefathers were the most straightforward 
men to be found in any capital in the world — 
at this or any other time. But they were re- 
bellious subjects of the King, just the same, 
and not entirely lacking in knowledge of the 
ways of the world. 

In consequence, Mr. Timothy Jones, a mer- 
chant from the Island of Bermuda, arrived in 
Bordeaux, France, on the 4th of May, 1776. 
He made no secret of the fact that he was bent 
upon purchasing certain gimcracks for the In- 
dian trade. What he neglected to mention 
was that when last seen across the water he had 
been known as Silas Deane, representative in 
Congress from the State of Connecticut, and 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 15 

that hidden about his person were letters in- 
structing him to purchase supplies for a rebel- 
lious army from the benevolent and neutral 
government of France. His letters, although 
scrupulously opened by neighbouring English- 
men of an inquisitve disposition, would hardly 
reveal the fact, the pith of them being invisible 
except to the eyes of John Jay, of New York, 
who had a special acid to display the writing. 
Now he had been told to look up a Dr. Du- 
bourg in Paris, one of the innumerable high- 
minded and capable men that were followers 
of Franklin in all parts of Europe, and to con- 
fide in him and in one Mr. Edward Bancroft. 
He was delighted to find that Bancroft had 
arrived before he had, and to discover both 
gentlemen awaiting his coming. He would 
probably have been less delighted if he could 
have seen the full and exhaustive report of his 
right name, his antecedents, his lodgings, and 
even the minutest details of his private instruc- 
tions which the genial Mr. Bancroft placed at 
once in the hands of the infuriated ambassa- 



16 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

dor of Great Britain. That gentleman, Lord 
Stormont, lost no time in warning Vergennes, 
the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, 
against the pernicious rebel. 

Now, in spite of the fact that Dubourg, who 
was a familiar of the court, told him that the 
ministers would not see him, and meant to keep 
secret any countenance they gave the United 
Colonies, Deane, like the intrepid Yankee he 
was, fared forth to the awesome palace of Ver- 
sailles and presented his commission to Ver- 
gennes himself. There would probably have 
been less discussion had he known that the 
genial M. Bonvouloir had gone straight from 
the King's antechamber for no other purpose 
in the world than to bring Deane before the 
King. 

Vergennes was a past master and post 
graduate of the game of diplomacy. He was 
familiar with the document — ^unique among 
state papers of the first order, in that it was 
both entertaining and witty as well as able 
and daring — already quoted as having been 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY IT 

submitted to King Louis a short while before 
by the inimitable librettist. Consonant with 
this policy, the secretary told Deane that he 
was charmed with the United Colonies, but 
was a stickler for his duties toward Great Brit- 
ain. However, he suggested casually that it 
was none of his business to interfere with pri- 
vate affairs, and that Roderique Hortalez & 
Company, a large Spanish mercantile house in 
Paris, might be of some service. 

So let us repair to Hortalez & Co. by all 
means. It was an imposing concern, from 
outward view. It occupied the Hotel de Hol- 
lande in the Faubourg du Temple, a sumptu- 
ous edifice built by the Dutch to house the 
Netherlands embassy. 

Who was M. Hortalez? Oh, he was a very 
great financier indeed. He was a Spanish 
nobleman of Castile, nothing less. He was a 
gentleman in private life, who in spite of his 
far-reaching feudal ties and princely relations 
had the most unaccountable benevolent tend- 
encies toward budding Democracies. He was, 



18 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

moreover, by happy chance, a dealer in mus- 
kets, bombs, powder, cutlasses, brass cannon, 
bayonets. He had on hand enough uniforms, 
shoes, hats and such to equip an army, if any 
such should happen into his store. Could he 
be seen? Why, not just at the moment. He 
was at home in his chateau studying his illus- 
trious family tree. But his confidential agent 
was right inside. 

Of course it was the writer of the plot, none 
other than the versatile M. de Beaumarchais 
himself. Boderique Hortalez, the great Span- 
ish godfather and providential angel of the 
rebellion must have fallen from a cliff into the 
sea. For nobody has ever seen him from that 
day to this. 

Possibly he was quite content to have his 
business entirely run by so able a lieutenant 
and upon such classic lines, worthy of the best 
traditions of the Comedie rran9aise. 

The success of this neat little arrangement 
and its enormous importance to our Revolution 
can best be demonstrated by those dispatches 



IN AMERICAlSr DIPLOMACY 19 

of the day which managed to evade the British 
patrol, and come down into the records of the 
Department. 

Silas Deane to Committee on Secret Cor- 
respondence. 

"Paris, August, 2, 1776. 
* * * I hope that it will be considered that 
one hundred field pieces, and arms, clothing, 
and accoutrements, with military stores for 
twenty-five thousand men, is a large affair, and 
that, although I am promised any credit, yet as 
they must be paid for, the sooner the better, if 
to be done without too great a risk." 

Considering that the Continental Army at 
no one time mustered half this many men — 
and considering that they had no supplies at 
all — the importance of this transaction becomes 
apparent. The source of this windfall was re- 
vealed in a letter the following 18th of August. 
Probably no more welcome news was ever con- 
veyed in a letter from foreign parts. 



20 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

To THE Committee on Secret Correspond- 
ence, Philadelphia. 

"Paris, August 18, 1776. 
Gentlemen: 

The respectful esteem that I bear toward 
that brave people who so well defend their lib- 
erty under your conduct has induced me to 
form a plan concurring in this great work, 
by establishing an extensive commercial house, 
solely for the purpose of serving you in Eu- 
rope, there to supply you with necessaries of 
every sort, to furnish you expeditiously and 
certainly with all articles — clothes, linens, 
powder, ammunition, muskets, cannon, or even 
gold for the payment of your troops, and in 
general everything that can be useful for the 
honourable war in which you are engaged. 
Your deputies, gentlemen, will find in me a 
sure friend, an asylum in my house, money in 
my coffers, and every means of facilitating 
their operations, whether of a public or secret 
nature. I will, if possible, remove all obstacles 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 21 

that may oppose your wishes from the politics 
of Europe." 

Undoubtedly neutrality of such benevolence 
has never been seen before or since. The Con- 
gress might view these literary protestations 
with the distrust the average man always has 
for fine phrases or signs of cleverness ; but they 
could not help appreciating the next para- 
graph. 

"At this very time, and without waiting for 
any answer from you, I have procured for you 
about two hundred pieces of brass cannon, 
four-pounders, which will be sent to you by the 
nearest way, two hundred thousand pounds of 
cannon powder, twenty thousand excellent 
fusils, some brass mortars, bombs, cannon balls, 
bayonets, platines, clothes, linens, etc., for the 
clothing of your troops, and lead for musket 
balls. An officer of the greatest merit for ar- 
tillery and genius, accompanied by lieutenants, 
officers, artillerists, cannoniers, etc., whom we 



22 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

think necessary for the service, will go to Phil- 
adelphia, even before j^ou have received my 
first dispatch. * * * R. Hortalez & Co." 

In order to repay this debt in kind to-day, 
we should have to send to France approxi- 
mately two hundred thousand six-inch guns 
and equipment for two million and a half 
troops. 



CHAPTER TWO 

"ENTANGLING ALLIANCES" 

Enter One of the Most Extraordinary Men that Ever 
Lived — Paris Taken by Storm — An Ambassador, 
Secretary of State, War, Navy, and Treasury All in 
One — A Courier Arrives in Paris with Startling In- 
telligence — Comedy of English and French Spies — 
Benjamin Franklin and Louis XVI Sign the Treaty 
of Alliance — Our Obligation to France. 

MEANTIME, Lord Stormont, the 
British Ambassador, had not been 
idle. He penetrated the elaborate 
subterfuges and disguises by which King 
Louis, Deane, and Hortalez & Co., made 
shift to outfit the Continental Army and still 
keep up an appearance of French neutrality, 
and was in a fair way to nip the scheme in the 
bud, when there swept into the arena one of 
the greatest diplomats of all time. He was 
not only above disguise and deceit, all tricks 

23 



24 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

and factions, but above all party lines at home 
and national boundaries abroad. 

Being in the midst of war to-day, we can ap- 
preciate the more the amazing power wielded by 
this eccentric gentleman of seventy summers, 
who appeared in Paris in 1776, clad in a plain 
brown suit which the courtiers thought was the 
dress of an "American cultivator." He not 
only appeared at court — he took the court and 
the whole nation by storm. Listen to some 
contemporary accounts. 

"His straight, unpowdered hair, his round 
hat, his brown coat, formed a contrast with the 
laced and embroidered coats and the pow^dered 
and perfumed heads of the courtiers of Ver- 
sailles. This novelty turned the enthusiastic 
heads of the French women. Elegant enter- 
tainments were given him. * * * I was pres- 
ent at one of these entertainments, when the 
most beautiful woman of three hundred was 
selected to place a crown of laurels upon the 
head of the American philosopher and two 
kisses upon his cheeks." 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 25 

"His reputation was more universal than 
that of Liebnitz or Newton, Frederick or Vol- 
taire, and his character more beloved and es- 
teemed than any or all of them. * * * His 
name was familiar to government and people, 
to foreign countries, nobility, clergy, and phi- 
losophers, as well as plebeians to such a de- 
gree that there was scarcely a peasant or a 
citizen, a valet de chambre, a coachman or 
footman, a lady's chambermaid or a scullion 
in a kitchen, who was not familiar with it, and 
who did not consider him a friend to human 
kind." 

The remarkable thing about this was, that 
the "scullion in the kitchen" was right — as 
every chancellor in Europe knew. 

There was no more need or use of secrecy. 
All England rang with the news. Lord Rock- 
ingham declared that this diplomat's arrival in 
France was a serious blow to Great Britain, 
more than counterbalancing the British victory 
on Long Island and the capture of New York. 
It was a common saying in London that he 



26 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

was of more value to the Americans than all 
the privateers they had sent out. 

All this, of course, was not because he was 
the idol of the Queen and the coachman, nor 
even because he was soon established in one of 
the most exclusive country places in the en- 
virons of Paris and treated by Vergennes more 
like the final authority than as a suppliant from 
a strugghng rebellion. It was because not 
only a large body of the English public, but by 
far the most powerful in brains and leader- 
ship, regarded him openly as one of the great 
leaders of the English race. He presented the 
amazing spectacle of the arch rebel and enemy 
of the country openly working for the inde- 
pendence of a province, and for the downfall 
of those in power, in intimate and daily cor- 
respondence with leaders of the opposition, the 
scientists, advanced thinkers, liberal politi- 
cians, and cultivated circles in all parts of the 
British Kingdom. 

There was no man so familiar with and 
observant of English politics as he. This was 



IN AMEPvICAN DIPLOMACY 27 

Benjamin Franklin, whom Matthew Arnold 
called the incarnation of sanity and clear sense, 
and of whom Sir Sam.uel Romilly said: 

"Of all the celebrated persons whom in my 
life I have chanced to see, Dr. Franklin, both 
from his appearance and conversation, seemed 
to me the most remarkable, * * * he im- 
pressed me with an opinion of him as one 
of the most extraordinary men that ever ex- 
isted." 

Not only was he an extraordinary diplomat, 
but one of the most successful. Those who 
believe that written rules and precedents 
bound in calfskin constitute diplomacy — or 
that a great ambassador is a kind of sharp 
special pleader sent out to drive as shrewd a 
material bargain as possible with the "enemy" 
— would do well to read the procedure of this 
father and master of all American statecraft. 
His enormous strength, carped at by all petty 
partisans of his time, consisted in an attitude 
toward his opponents so obviously fair and 
sympathetic, so generously conciliatory and 
humanly honest, that he quickly became not 



28 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

so much a negotiator as a mediator. His con- 
duct, diametrically opposite to that popularly 
supposed to be correct for an ambassador — 
with his demands and his dignity and his coun- 
try's honour and paramount interests and the 
rest of it — was that of a just and tolerant 
neighbour rather than that of an attorney for 
the plaintiff. 

We shall see how this tremendous conception 
became eventually responsible for the heahng 
of the breach in the Anglo-Saxon family, and 
the foundation of America as a world-power 
knit to a rejuvenated and liberated England, 
instead of a seaboard province hemmed in by 
the colonies of the Bourbons. 

He arrived with instructions to make a com- 
mercial treaty with France — and to obtain such 
recognition as he could for the new Republic. 
Joined with him in this enterprise were Deane 
and Lee, supernumeraries in a hindering ca- 
pacit}^ The French were by no means ready 
to come out into the open with active assistance. 
So while diplomacy languished this humorous 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 29 

old gentleman of seventy took upon himself 
tasks beside which even the immense volmne of 
business thrown upon our embassies at the out- 
break of the World War was a bagatelle. 

He became the principal financier of the 
bankrupt Colonies. On leaving home he had 
subscribed every cent of his own cash to the 
first Liberty Loan. And upon reaching his 
exalted post, instead of remittances for salary, 
he received innumerable drafts drawn on him 
by Congress. This was the only way Congress 
had of getting any money. It drew on Frank- 
lin to pay for its powder and its cannon, its 
ships and its seamen, its uniforms and its sup- 
plies. Who on earth was to take this melan- 
choly paper of a desperate adventure, they 
did not know. But Franklin responded, first 
to last, with 52,000,000 francs. Wharton, the 
great authority on International Law, says 
that he exercised the function of Secretary of 
State and of the Treasury in assuming these 
duties; of Secretary of War in purchasing and 
forwarding supplies, and in recruiting officers 



30 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

and men; of Secretary of the Navy in fitting 
out and manning and commissioning priva- 
teers; and of Supreme Admiralty Judge in 
determining prize questions and adjusting the 
almost innumerable controversies in which 
those concerned with these privateers were en- 
gaged. 

It was he who engaged the services of the 
immortal Lafayette, whose spirit leads the 
American host to-day, and equipped that dar- 
ing and enterprising seaman, John Paul Jones, 
with the guns of the Bonhomme Richard, 

And then things began to happen. Rumour, 
always by mysterious process faster than mor- 
tal means of travel, reported that a special 
messenger from the United States had eluded 
the English frigates and was tearing toward 
Paris with all signs of some portentous news. 
The old American Nestor gathered his coun- 
cil about him in his retreat at Passy, and 
waited with great impatience. There were 
Arthur Lee and Silas Deane and the doubt- 
ful Bancroft — WiUiam Lee, of Virginia, and 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 31 

the star of the original cast, Caron de Beaumar- 
chais. About dinner time there clattered into 
the courtyard John Loring Austin, of Boston. 
Before he even had time to alight, Franklin 
addressed him. 

"Sir, is Philadelphia taken?" 

"Yes, sir." 

The old gentleman, so says an old diary, 
clasped his hands and returned to the hotel. 

"But, sir," cried the messenger, "I have 
greater news than that. General Burgoyne 
and his whole army are prisoners of war!" 

The effect was dynamic. Everyone fell to 
making use of this epochal and tremendous 
news after his own fashion. The star actor 
bounced into a chaise with William Lee and 
tore off to Versailles, the hero of his own melo- 
drama, to tell the King, and tore in such ex- 
cellent histrionic style that he turned over the 
chaise and broke his ribs. The rest of the staff 
began copying the dispatches for diplomatic 
action, while Franklin's valet and Major 
^'hornton, Arthur Lee's private secretary, be- 



32 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

gan making a full report of the whole for my 
Lord Stormont, Ambassador of Great Brit- 
ain. Whatever else failed His Majesty King 
George III, it was not his secret service. 

Franklin had been warned that there were 
spies in his house but had made the typical re- 
ply that he didn't mind, for he had nothing to 
conceal, not even from his enemies. Perhaps 
this explains why in the end he had no enemies. 
At all events, the spies were of considerable 
service to him at this juncture. They led Lord 
North to begin frantic negotiations for peace 
on the spot. Of course, Franklin wanted peace 
— as we want peace to-day, but not a Han- 
overian peace. 

However, it was a matter of life and 
death to get the French Navy behind him. 
And here the spies did us another good turn. 
It is said that Vergennes also had his agents in 
the Passy household. And, by dint of listen- 
ing at the kej^holes and picking from waste 
baskets and catching snatches of dinner taUi, 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 33 

they became aware of these advances by the 
English. 

This alarming information, added to the 
great influence of Franklin's personality, per- 
suaded the Bourbon King to act at once. His 
whole soul was set upon the dismemberment 
of the British Empire. He did not care about 
the Colonies rising up into a great power — 
both on account of his own prestige and a 
natural aversion for republics, and because 
his cousin, the Spaniard, rightly opined that 
an American republic would be a menace to 
the American possessions of Spain. But a 
reconciliation — that was not to be considered. 

The philosopher played his hand like the 
great genius that he was. Frank and genuine 
in every move, he still concealed a greater 
knowledge of human nature, and a more subtle 
mind under a disingenuous aspect, than any 
man alive. From the unrecognized suppliant 
he assumed at once the role of the master of the 
situation. All the parties came to him. Con- 



34 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

rad Alexander Gerard, Royal Syndic of the 
City of Strassburg and Secretary of His Maj- 
esty's Council of State, arrived on the 17th of 
December, 1777, to announce that "His Maj- 
esty is fixed in his determination not only to 
acknowledge, but to support your indepen- 
dence by every means in his power." 

This was the first great diplomatic triumph 
in our history. It was put into formal shape 
by treaty duly made the 6th of February fol- 
lowing our only formal alliance. Its princi- 
pal provisions were "to maintain effectually 
the liberty, sovereignty, and independence ab- 
solute and unlimited of the said United States" 
and that "neither of the two parties shall con- 
clude either truce or peace with Great Brit- 
ain without the formal consent of the other first 
obtained." 

It is sufficient evidence of the impotency of 
old dogmas that the legend of "no entangling 
alliances" should have been disregarded to the 
saving of our very existence in the first treaty 
ever made — and now 140 years later again dis- 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 35 

regarded for the safety of our first friend. 
For although it is not down on paper, no hon- 
est American can doubt that the old compact 
holds reciprocally to-day, and that we are 
bound to "maintain effectually the liberty, 
sovereignty, and independence" of France, 
and conclude no separate truce or peace with 
the Teuton, 



CHAPTER THREE 

FIGHTING FOR LIFE. THE 
BIRTH OF A NATION 

The European Cabal Against Democracy — The 
United States Sends Out an Ail-American Team — 
Benjamin Franklin Plays Fair and Wins the Ap- 
plause of His Opponents — John Jay Discovers a 
Plot and Throws His Instructions to the Winds — 
The Part Played by the Intercepted Dispatches of 
Marbois and the Secret Mission of Reyneval in 
American Independence — The Foundations of the 
Anglo-Saxon Solidarity. 

IN SPITE of the doctrine of blood and iron 
and the playful maxims of an all-conquer- 
ing destiny so artfully and universally 
spread through the German Empire by its 
princes, evidence is not lacking to-day that the 
people of that empire may be distinguished 
from its rulers in their aims and purposes and 
ideas of the war now raging. In recognizing 

36 



DRAMATIC MOMENTS 37 

this distinction and in directing the fierce pub- 
hcity of his open diplomacy toward the people 
over the heads of the Kaiser's star chamber, 
Woodrow Wilson is putting in practice a diplo- 
matic precedent which is perhaps the greatest 
single step yet taken toward the liberation of 
the world from the scourge of national feuds 
and dynastic wars. 

But in making this distinction between 
rulers and the human beings ruled, in the frank 
directness of his negotiations, and in the mo- 
mentous decision by which he took the action 
which for the first time in history caused the 
raising of the Stars and Stripes in St. Paul's, 
London — in these actions for which he will be 
famous for all time, he was still only following 
the principles and the train of events laid by 
Benjamin Franklin in Paris, a long time ago. 

Nurtured by the aggressive spirit of our 
public men from the Civil War to the Spanish 
War and by politicians anxious about the Irish 
and the German vote — as well as by a false 
sense that patriotism demanded an hereditary 



38 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

and always-vanquished enemy — an uninformed 
public has held the belief that the victory of 
Yorktown ended the horrid British rule in 
America and set this country free fully 
equipped to sail a new and better sea. The 
exact facts of the matter are not quite so flat- 
tering to our pride, although they do in fact 
augur much better for our future and our 
civihzation than does the popular version. 

Yorktown fell before a combined American 
and French army in October, 1781. For the 
moment the military effort of the Hanoverian 
King in the thirteen Colonies had completely 
broken down. But even the most cursory view 
of the European situation at that date will show 
how far this event came short of settling the 
future of this country as a great independent 
liberal force in the world. 

We were recognized at the time by two coun- 
tries — France and Holland. The rest of the 
world under the rule of what we now consider 
despots, had not only no sympathy with us, 
but viewed this upstart republican government 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 39 

with the gravest possible distrust and concern. 
As far as they were concerned, they wished us 
ill, except in so far as a revolt in her colonies 
embarrassed Great Britain, of whose power 
they were jealous. And they left us strictly 
alone, turning our ambassadors from their 
doors with the utmost incivility and contempt. 
In establishing peace and commerce, our 
standing in the world community, and our na- 
tional boundaries — upon the last of which our 
entire future power depended— -we were at the 
mercy of five foreign forces : 

1. The infinitesimal part of the French 

public that had any knowledge of or 
influence in Foreign affairs. 

2. King Louis XVI and his circle of ad- 

visors. 

3. The Spanish Court. 

4. The English throne. 

5. The voice of the English people. 

To begin with, it is abundantly clear that in 
so far as the French people were concerned the 



40 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

United States had the most cordial, aknost ve- 
hement support, based upon a sympathy with 
the strugghng ideals of personal liberty and 
human emancipation which has been dear to 
the hearts of both peoples ever since and has 
become an international tradition of the most 
binding kind. The advertising of this attitude 
and its presentation to the citizens of France 
were largely due to the extraordinary percep- 
tion and abilities of Franklin. 

But as a plain matter of fact the French 
pubhc had about as much to say concerning 
their foreign policy as had an Irishman with 
England's under Edward III. Not only had 
the public no say, but not even the vaguest idea 
of what it was. As an active force in the tre- 
mendous decision to be reached, they had no 
more influence than the rest of the populace of 
Continental Europe, whose prevailing convic- 
tion was that the inhabitants of North America 
were bright red and wore feathers. 

Vergennes was at the helm for Louis XVI. 
His policy is now clear enough. He had en- 



IN AMERICAISr DIPLOMACY 41 

tered the war and made an alliance with the 
United States solely to injure Great Britain. 
Since making his agreement with us he had 
made another with Spain — his true ally — 
which, as we shall see, was more dangerous to 
us than the Hessian forces of King George 
ever thought of being. 

The Spanish Court was our deadly enemy, 
although at the moment fighting England un- 
der a secret treaty with France. And of 
course King George was beside himself with 
fury, resolved to crush the Colonies and with 
them English liberty. 

Add to these circumstances the fact that in 
April, 1782, the English Admiral Rodney 
smashed the French naval power at Mar- 
tinique, and that shortly after Lord Howe 
raised the siege of Gibraltar and ended the 
hopes of the Spaniards, and the difficulties of 
our peace commissioners become apparent. 

These commissioners constituted a powerful 
team — probably the most powerful diplomatic 
trio ever sent forth into the world. They were 



42 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

Franklin, old, wise, and tolerant; John Jay, 
young, impatient, and daring, already a great 
master of English law and keen analytical 
thinking; and John Adams — well, an Adams, 
that is to say a genius, whose uncompromising, 
provincial, stubborn, and cantankerous meth- 
ods still succeeded because of his monumental 
earnestness and patent honesty. 

Primarily their instructions were to insist 
upon absolute independence, and to consult and 
take the advice of the French Court in all 
negotiations. 

They met Mr. Richard Oswald, sent by the 
British, to Paris. To begin with, it all looked 
bright. It was almost a family party. Os- 
wald was a gentleman — friendly, courteous, 
even sympathetic, reasonable to a degree, and 
a charming companion. But before they had 
gone very far it developed that he was author- 
ized to treat with the "United Colonies." To 
be sure, he was to grant them independence. 
But John Jay would not listen to a word of it. 
He intended to be treated with as represent- 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 43 

ing the United States, already independent. 

So according to instructions he proceeded to 
Versailles to see the Secretary for Foreign 
Affairs to consult on this point. And his ex- 
perience there showed him the exceedingly pre- 
carious position these infant United States 
were in: 

"I observed to the Count that it would be 
descending from the ground of independence 
to treat under the description of colonies. He 
replied that a name signified little; that the 
King of Great Britain's styling himself the 
King of France was no obstacle to the King 
of France treating with him ; that an acknowl- 
edgment of our independence, instead of pre- 
ceding, must in the natural course of events 
be the effect of the treaty, and that it would 
not be reasonable to expect the effect before 
the cause." 

Since, meantime, Oswald, the Englishman, 
as Jay says, "upon this, as upon every other 
occasion, behaved in a candid and proper man- 
ner," which is to say, seemed inclined to agree 



M DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

with the Americans, this position of the French 
whose help they counted upon, and whose ad- 
vice they were ordered to follow, caused the 
greatest alarm. And this was increased a hun- 
dred fold by further developments. 

For the Conde d'Aranda, a splendid noble- 
man from Arragon, ambassador of Spain, 
to whom France was primarily bound, conde- 
scended to allow John Jay to wait upon him. 
Jay's account is interesting, to show how the 
props were falling from beneath the Ameri- 
can cause : 

"He began the conference by various re- 
marks on the general principles in which con- 
tracting parties should form treaties, on the 
magnanimity of his sovereign, and on his own 
disposition to disregard trifling considerations 
in great matters. Then opening Mitchell's 
large map of North America, he asked me 
what were our boundaries. I told him that the 
boundary between us and the Spanish Domin- 
ions was a line drawn through from the head 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 45 

of the Mississippi down the middle thereof. 
* * * He entered into a long discussion of our 
right to such an extent * * * and proposed to 
run a longitudinal line on the east side of the 
river * * * A few days afterward he sent over 
the same map with his proposed line marked on 
in red ink. It ran from near the confines of 
Georgia, but east of the Flint River to the 
confluence of the Kanawa with the Ohio and 
thence round the western shores of Lakes Erie 
and Huron, and thence around Lake Michigan 
to Lake Superior." 

Added to this contention of the Spaniards 
was the amazing proposition coming from an 
ally, that the country above the Ohio, if not 
Spanish, should remain British. 

Jay went over and left this map with Ver- 
gennes and told him that it would not do at all. 
The consequence was that Jay was invited to 
dinner at the palace, to talk it over with Rey- 
neval, Vergennes's secretary. And he came 
out boiling with indignation, and teeming with 



46 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

suspicions. Reyneval had handed him a 
memorandum, of which this is the sahent pas- 
sage: 

"If by the future treaty of peace, Spain 
preserves West Florida, she alone will be the 
sole proprietor of the com^se of the Missis- 
sippi from the thirty -first degree of latitude to 
the mouth of this river. Whatever may be the 
case with that part which is beyond this point 
to the north, the United States of America 
can have no pretentions to it, not being masters 
of either border to this river." 

This meant that the United States was to be 
confined for ever to the Atlantic coast, and not 
only not become a power, but was never even 
to open the Mississippi basin. And that our 
allies were insisting on these terms, while sup- 
posed to be aiding our cause. And this was 
the more accentuated by the receipt of a docu- 
ment put into his hands on Sept. 10th by an 
agent of the British government. 

This was a dispatch from Barbe Marbois, 
French charge d'affaires at Philadelphia, to the 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 47i 

Comte de Vergennes. Like most dispatches 
traversing the sea those days it had fallen prey 
to an English frigate, fished out of the sea 
where it had been thrown when in danger of 
capture. It revealed that the French were 
planning to prevent our purpose of sharing in 
the Newfoundland fisheries, "the cradle of sea- 
men." 

What all this meant, is put quite plainly 
by Jay himself; 

"They are interested in separating us from 
Great Britain, and on that point we may, I be- 
lieve, depend on them; but it is not their in- 
terest that we should become a great and for- 
midable people, and therefore they will not 
help us become so. It is not their interest that 
such a treaty should be formed between us and 
Britain as would produce cordiality and mu- 
tual confidence." 

Apparently the American diplomats were 
checkmated, and the United States destined to 
be a Costa Bica. For not even a Fourth of 
July orator will contend that, single handed 



48 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

we could establish an empire in the face of 
France, Spain, and England. 

What the American commissioners did, how- 
ever, was simple enough. They went to Rich- 
ard Oswald, and laid the matter frankly before 
him. And he agreed to send at once for new 
instructions to negotiate with a free and inde- 
pendent United States. 

And then the plot thtekened. These were 
hectic days for the Americans, two months 
from any instructions, with the destiny of not 
only America but the Anglo-Saxon and, as it 
now appears, perhaps of all the world in their 
hands, marooned in a babel of cabals and in- 
trigues. On the 9th of September they re- 
ceived certain word that Reyneval was setting 
out for England in the greatest secrecy, and 
that the Conde d'Aranda had galloped out to 
Versailles in the greatest haste to confer with 
him before he left. No wonder it looked to 
John Jay as if the goose was to be cooked in 
London and carved by the three kings, with 
America left to freeze outside the door. 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 49 

He never had much patience with instruc- 
tions. Like Napoleon, who tore up his let- 
ters from the National Council, and Dewey 
who cut his cables, John Jay when on the war- 
path decided things for himself. From that 
date he neglected entirely to consult with Ver- 
gennes about anything. On the contrary he 
called on Benjamin Vaughan, private secre- 
tary to Lord Shelburne, Prime Minister of 
England, and laid the plot before him, sending 
him post haste like a second D'Artagnan to 
London, to circumvent Reyneval, and prevent 
the coup. 

The question naturally is : Why did he sup- 
pose that he could save his country by con- 
fiding in the enemy? 

This was because of a fact which is at the 
very foundation of our government, the one 
fundamental basis of our entire history, and 
the keynote of the present aligmnent of the 
nations in the fight for liberty. 

The fact was that the English people were 
a power not only apart from but in opposition 



50 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

to the King, and that this power was at that 
very moment arising in one of its periodic 
struggles for the destruction of royal preroga- 
tive and arbitrary rule. And that the Eng- 
lishmen leading this battle realized that our 
War of Independence was the very backbone 
of their movement — that the American cause 
was their cause and the cause of freedom of 
peoples of the whole world. 

Franklin's correspondence shows that he 
was in intimate and friendly relations with 
John Charles Fox, Lord Shelburne, Hartley, 
Oswald, Lord Chatham, Lord Rockingham, 
Conway, Adam Smith, the inheritors and 
champions of the Anglo-Saxon traditions and 
independence. And that so strong were these 
men that they openly said in the very halls of 
King George that "we heartily wish success to 
the Americans." 

Richmond and Fox proclaimed their satis- 
faction over every British defeat in America. 
Walpole wrote: 

"I rejoice that there is still a great continent 



IlSr AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 51 

of Englishmen who still remain free and inde- 
pendent, and who laugh at the impotent major- 
ities of a prostitute parliament." 

Burke and Chatham openly proclaimed their 
correspondence with Franklin and held every 
"British and Hessian" victory over America to 
be a victory over British freedom. 

The American historian WilHs Fletcher 
Johnson points out that "Many British officers 
refused to serve against America, preferring to 
resign their commissions. Among these were : 
the eldest son of Lord Chatham, who had be- 
gun a most promising military career; Admiral 
Keppel, Lieutenant-General Sir Jeffrey Am- 
herst ; General Conway, afterward a field mar- 
shal; Lord Frederick Cavendish; and the Earl 
of Effingham, who was commended for his act 
by the city corporations of London and Dublin 
in public addresses." 

Wharton says : 

"When the question is asked, why did not the 
British ministry arrest men of this class when cor- 
responding with the American legation — a question 



52 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

often put by Hutchinson and other refugees in Eng- 
land — the answer, as elsewhere noticed, is, that they 
could not be arrested without arresting almost the 
whole Whig opposition." 

The personal part played by the perfect con- 
fidence these men had in Franklin, and the 
reward our great ambassador reaped for his 
candid, open, and friendly attitude is best em- 
phasized by the event. On February 22, 1782, 
Conway's famous address to the King resulted 
in a resolution in Parliament against further 
continuance of the war, and the fall of Lord 
North and the King's party. Lord Rocking- 
ham became Prime Minister; Charles James 
Fox, Foreign Minister, and Lord Shelburne, 
at whose house Franldin's messengers were ac- 
customed to spend their time in England, Sec- 
retary for the Colonies, and master of the situ- 
ation. 

Now Shelburne regarded Franklin not only 
with the greatest confidence and esteem, but 
considered him the one great authority upon 
the whole movement. As a consequence, in 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 53 

order to open peace negotiations, he discarded 
the entire crooked set of current diplomatic 
rules and methods, and cast about to find an 
ambassador who would be personally satisfac- 
tory to the philosopher. He chose one of 
Frankhn's personal friends, Richard Oswald. 
He might as well have chosen an American. 
Oswald's sympathy for our revolution can be 
judged by his furnishing the enormous bail of 
$250,000 for Henry Laurens, an American 
envoy who had been thrown into the Tower 
of London. The spirit of this negotiation, a 
magnificent precedent of fair dealing between 
peoples, can be shown by Shelburne's letter to 
Franklin. It not only shows the purpose of 
this new party in power to emancipate the 
Americans, but the unparalleled confidence 
they had in Franklin. 

"Your letter discovering the same disposi- 
tion, has made me send to you Mr. Oswald. I 
have had a longer acquaintance with him than 
I even had the pleasure to have with you. I 
believe him an honest man and^ after consult- 



54 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

ing some of our common friends, I have 
thought him the fittest for the purpose. He is 
a pacifical man and conversant in these negoti- 
ations, which are most interesting to mankind. 
* * * He is fully appraised of my mind, and 
you may give full credit to everything he as- 
sures you of. At the same time, if any other 
channel occurs to you, I am ready to embrace 
it. I wish to retain the same simplicity and 
good faith which existed between us in trans- 
actions of less importance." 

Of course, the truth of the matter was that 
King George in his battle for autocratic 
power had been even worse beaten in England 
than in America, and that Franklin and Jay 
were not dealing with enemies at all. Shel- 
burne's inclination, as well as far-sighted pol- 
icy, was to create as powerful an independent 
country as possible, founded upon the same 
liberal ideals of government and conscience as 
his own, and knit as firmly to the old English 
stock as inheritance and language, tradition, 
reUgion, literature and commerce, laws, man- 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 55 

ners and similar conceptions of truth, justice, 
and liberty could knit them. 

This was his own statement, and this was the 
outcome. Independence was acknowledged, 
the treaty was signed without knowledge of 
the French Court, and we were given all we 
demanded. The wisdom of this decision was 
demonstrated not long ago when the first flo- 
tilla of American destroyers cleared for action 
and joined the British patrol in the Irish Sea. 



i^' 



CHAPTER FOUK 

"TRADITIONS OF THE SERVICE" 

Gouverneur Morris Takes a Hand in the French 
Revolution — His Memorandum to the King — The 
Man from Home Plans the Escape of Marie An- 
toinette — The Affair of the King's Money and 
Papers — Coaching a Despot to Play Republican — 
The Embassy a Haven for Condemned Aristos — In- 
vaded by the Commune — The Minister Arrested — 
All the Ambassadors Leave — "Better My Friends 
Should Wonder Why I Stay Than My Enemies In- 
quire Why I Went Away" — Morris Stands by His 
Post of Danger — The King's Legacy Delivered in 
Vienna. 



w^ 



i iiw -^r "^ENT to court this morning, 
reads the ancient diary of an 
American gentleman. "Noth- 
ing remarkable, only they were up all night, 
expecting to be murdered." 

Not an unreasonable expectation either, that 
fatal summer of 1792, when bloody revolution 
ran riot through the streets of Paris, and the 

56 



DRAMATIC MOMENTS 57 

guillotine worked overtime to prove the equal- 
ity of men. Some Americans still harbour the 
belief that the berth of the American diplomat 
is a sinecure. The opinion is prevalent among 
the smart dilettanti at home, that he lacks 
polish and power to deal with the corps of 
trained statesmen at the seats of the mighty. 
It is a safe guess that they never knew the part 
played by Gouverneur Morris at the most mag- 
nificent court in the world — ^that they never 
heard of the confidence and dependence placed 
upon the shoulders of the diplomat from 
Harlem when hell broke loose in Versailles 
and the mighty house of Bourbon, the seat of 
all splendour, glory, and power began to fall. 
Under the savage attacks of the rising terror, 
ministers and cabinets fell in a day, and craven 
flight or the knife severed the hosts of false 
friends or staunch adherents from the side of 
King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, dar- 
ling of the romancers. And so it came that the 
last of the great feudal kings was sorely in 
need of an honest man, a keen counsellor, and 



58 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

a fearless friend. What did he know of in- 
surgents — but to shoot them down? Or of the 
hearts and desires and wills of men — he who 
had fondly believed himself to be the state? 
(A delusion still prevalent in certain quarters.) 

An assembly of lunatics, in national con- 
clave, demanded a constitution. The Secre- 
tary for Foreign Aff aii's, the Comte de Mont- 
morin de Saint-Herem, repaired in haste to No. 
488 Rue de la Planche, Faubourg, St. Ger- 
main. **Your Excellency, the American Min- 
ister, what is this demand for a constitution? 
Pray what is His Majesty to do about this?" 

Wise Majesty to ask. The humorous and 
sturdy American, veteran of revolutions, dic- 
tated a memorandum. He also dictated a 
speech to be made by the King. It is not at all 
impossible that Carlyle would never have had 
occasion to write his immortal record, or the 
Scarlet Pimpernel to rescue the fair daughters 
of the ancient nobility from the fury of Robes- 
pierre, if the King had made use of Morris's 
document. 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 59 

But the Minister did not deliver it until too 
late. His regret is a matter of record. The 
party of assassination began mobilizing its 
brigands by the walls of Paris. 

On the 17th day of July there was a bril- 
liant dinner party at the embassy. The for- 
eign ambassadors were there, and the Comte 
de Montmorin. The old diary says : 

"In the evening M. de Montmorin takes me into 
the garden to communicate the situation of things 
and ask my opinion. I tell him that I think the 
King should quit Paris. He thinks otherwise, and 
fosters a thousand empty hopes and vain expecta- 
tions." 

And at this point the American took a hand 
in the game. The King's situation was more 
desperate than any situation in melodrama. 
In this dilemma he turned to Gouverneur 
Morris. 

Among the obscure characters drawn into 
the councils of state by the mad political whirl- 
wind was a M. Terrier de Monciel, whose as- 
sociations were largely revolutionary. But 



60 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

Morris knew his man — and in this dire extrem- 
ity recommended the proud Bourbon to put his 
fate in de Monciel's hands. And then these 
two, Morris and de Monciel, called into coun- 
cil the hot-headed and rampant fitienne Bre- 
mond, docteur de la Sorbonne, and began, 
Richard Harding Davis fashion, to meddle 
with destiny, and to try to rewrite the tragedy. 

The crazy mob broke into the palace of the 
Tuileries and hazed the distracted King. He 
donned the red cap of insurrection, waved his 
wooden sword, and cheered his tormentors. 
There was no time to be lost, so Gouverneur 
Morris devised a plan. The King and the 
Queen were to make an escape. The Swiss 
Guard — that faithful and formidable compan}^ 
— left Courbevoie to cover the retreat. The 
route was planned to the last detail through 
the forest of Ardennes and the principality of 
Beaumont. 

In camp there lay the Marquis de Lafayette, 
known to the Minister of old, reliable as Ajax. 

The vacillation and inherited perversity of 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 61 

the doomed King led hini to hesitate until the 
right moment had passed, and the plot was re- 
vealed. So the ministers turned back to the 
arts of statecraft in an endeavour to turn the 
tide. And it is interesting to observe that in 
tliis most critical time of all French history, it 
was to the American Minister they turned for 
advice. 

On the 22d of July the King asked whether 
Morris would take charge of the royal papers 
and the royal money, and on the 24th, de 
Monciel appeared at the embassy with 547,000 
livres. Years afterward in Vienna the am- 
bassador handed a portion of this sum to the 
Duchesse d'Angouleme — all that was left of 
the princely inheritance of the Bourbon dy- 
nasty to the daughter of Louis XVI. 

By this time the King had become hardly 
more than a figurehead, a prisoner in his own 
palace. The Revolutionists had their minions 
in the cabinet, their brigands in the street, and 
their spies at every keyhole. At the risk of 
his life, Morris, at this juncture, undertook the 



62 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

impossible task of coaching the hereditary des- 
pot to play the republican — the mind moulded 
in the form of arbitrary will to adopt the wiles 
of the politician and the forms of democratic 
cajolery and practice so familiar to the authors 
of the American Revolution. He sat up 
nights with the King's counsellors — de Mont- 
morin, Bertrand de Moleville, de Monciel, and 
Bremond — framing speeches and measures 
with which to feed the Assembly and the Mar- 
seillais ; letters to be written by the hidebound 
monarch to his captains and the Provinces — 
state documents which in other hands perhaps 
might have saved a kingdom. 

It was of no avail. The expected explosion 
came on the 10th of August — and the consti- 
tutional and inevitable hesitation of the royal 
pigmy resulted in his deserting his own staunch 
defenders to be sacked with his castle, and him- 
self to be seized and condemned to death. 

This left Paris and France at the mercy of 
a mob-rule whose frightfulness has become a 
byword for all time. No man's life was worth 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 63 

a song. Where kings are killed and beautiful 
young queens murdered, what chance for an 
alien and hostile ambassador? 

It was at this juncture that Morris estab- 
lished the precedent and tradition of staying 
by his diplomatic post in time of danger, which 
has since been the infallible custom of the serv- 
ice — and particularly in Paris. His house be- 
came a centre of suspicion — and not without 
warrant, from the Jacobin point of view. He 
gave refuge there to aristos in distress, hiding 
for their lives. Armed men of the Commune 
invaded his house; he was arrested in the city 
on the most paltry excuses, and held up on 
any journey beyond the walls. It was a des- 
perate and dangerous situation. In the end 
every European ambassador and minister left 
the accursed city, and the Stars and Stripes 
alone floated beside the tricolour in Paris. 
Morris's papers give some idea of his state of 
mind. He tells of his good-bye visit to the 
British Ambassador : 

*'The Venetian Ambassador has been 



64 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

brought back and very ignominiously treated; 
even his papers examined, as it is said, hy Mm, 
They (he and the British Ambassador) can't 
get passports. He is in a tearing passion. 
He has burned his papers, which I will not do." 

To Thomas Jefferson he writes : 

*'The different ambassadors are all taking 
flight, and if I stay I shall be alone. I mean, 
however, to stay. * * * It is true that the po- 
sition is not without danger, but I presume that 
when the President did me the honour of nam- 
ing me to this embassy it was not for my per- 
sonal pleasure or safety, but to promote the 
interests of my country." 

A letter to his brother, General Morris, in 
London, says: 

"The date of this letter will show you that I 
did not, as you hoped, abandon my post, which 
is not always a very proper conduct. * * * 
You are right in the idea that Paris is a dan- 
gerous residence. But it is better that my 
friends should wonder why I sta}^ than my 
enemies inquire why I went away." 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 65 

This sturdy example of Morris was followed 
by Elihu B. Washburne, Minister to France, 
at the time of the siege of Paris by the Prus- 
sians, and again by Myron T. Herrick when 
the official exodus from the French capital be- 
gan to the tune of Von Kluck's guns in Au- 
gust, 1914. These last two faithful perform- 
ances have become a part of that peculiar 
tradition of good will and affection between 
the French and the Americans which has al- 
ways held the imaginations of the populace, 
even at times when the diplomats were pulling 
at the greatest odds. 



CHAPTER FIVE 

"TRADITIONS OF THE SERVICE" 

{Continued) 

Elihu Washbume, Ambassador for the World During 
the Siege of Paris — The Commune Again — History 
Repeated — The Empress Eugenie Rescued from the 
Revolution by an American — The Coming of the 
Prussians — All the Foreign Envoys Pick Up Their 
Hats in a Hurry — The Deluge of Victims — The 
Secret Messenger of the Royal Family — The Gold of 
Prince Murat — Counsellor to the Republic — Vive 
VAmerique — An Embassy Over a Mine and Under a 
Barricade. 

ISTORIES of American diplomacy 
have little to say about Elihu Wash- 
burne. The reason is that he had 
small part in controversy and barter and popu- 
lar assertion of American rights and demands. 
For this very reason his influence was all the 
greater. He devoted himself to the service of 

other people — a method of establishing pres- 

66 




DRAMATIC MOMENTS 67 

tige which the world is beginning to recognize 
to be a thousand fold more potent than the 
selfish, grasping policy of the old chancel- 
lories, or the incessant rattling of the scabbard. 
In milder form the dramas of the hectic days 
of Morris were played again in 1870. Wash- 
burne had a foretaste of the great task of pro- 
tecting alien people in a war-ridden country 
which has since reflected such great credit upon 
our ambassadors abroad. At the outbreak of 
war he undertook the protection of the subjects 
of the North German Confederation, of Sax- 
ony, Darmstadt, and Hesse. His devotion 
and success not only won him the unstinted 
gratitude of Bismarck, and the German peo- 
ple — but in their behalf established a humane 
practice of handling enemy aliens on the part 
of the French Government that must bring a 
blush of shame to even the most callous Prus- 
sian contemplating the population of northern 
France which they have enslaved. The French 
readily agreed to send home all the Germans 
in Paris, except those capable of military duty. 



68 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

But even this did not suit Washburne. He de- 
manded, and finally obtained permission to 
send them all home, excepting only actual spies 
and soldiers. 

Lulled by false reports, and riding on the 
buoyant crest of their native enthusiasm, the 
Parisians were thunderstruck by the sudden 
news that MacMahon had been completely 
crushed at Sedan, 40,000 men lost; that their 
army had been defeated before Metz and the 
Emperor captured. They reacted after their 
ancient pattern. Overnight the royal govern- 
ment was overthrown, and the inevitable mob 
made its roaring expedition to the ancient Tuil- 
eries in quest of the Queen, even as it had done 
years before in the time of Marie Antoinette. 
The Empress Eugenie was quicker than her 
tragic predecessor to realize the resources of 
the benevolent neutral from Indiana. It was 
Prince Metternich of 'Austria, and the Cava- 
lieri Nigra, the Italian Ambassador, that 
dashed her out of the palace. But the 
D'Artagnan that saved the Queen and turned 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 69^ 

the tragedy into an American comedy was the 
man from home. Down the street a bit from 
the Embassy lived an American dentist, Dr. 
Evans. Plots and communes and revolutions, 
wars and sudden death are nothing to a 
dentist— at least to a Yankee dentist. In 
Evans's hands the Prince and the Ambassador 
deposited the precious and dangerous charge. 
Suffice it to say that a few days later, after his 
own method, he saw her safely aboard an Eng- 
lish yacht bound for Dover, and returned 
casually to his business, unknown and unsung. 

Washburne's diary records that under these 
circumstances, and with a state of siege im- 
minent, all the ambassadors representing the 
European powers picked up their hats in a 
hurry and left Paris for Tours. The South 
American consuls followed suit, iM left him 
in charge of the diplomatic business of the 
world at the capital of France. 

His services to these many masters, unique 
at the time, were conducted with such ability 
as to endear him and the United States to a 



70 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

major portion of the globe, and conducted in 
such patiently straightforward manner as to 
give him the confidence of all parties in France. 

About midnight, on the 4th of September, 
1870, when the streets were still full of the 
raging populace, a man appeared at the door 
of the Minister's residence on the Avenue Mon- 
taigne. It was the butler of Prince Murat, 
of the royal house of Napoleon. He presented 
the compliments of the Prince, and produced 
a bag of gold, for all the world as in an 
Arabian Nights' tale. He requested that the 
American take care of it for him through the 
whirlwind, as Morris had done for King Louis 
before him. 

And at the same time, Jules Favre, Secre- 
tary for Foreign Affairs of the National 
Council, wf$ consulting him daily upon the 
game to be played, and exhorting him in his 
own private capacity to fix up some kind of 
peace with the school of blood and iron. 

Three days after the Revolution he officially 
recognized the Republic on behalf of the 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 71 

United States. This brought the people to his 
door by the thousands, in a delirium of joy. 
Twelve deputations with drums and banners 
arrived in one day, and the Stars and Stripes 
blossomed forth all over the city, as from time 
to time they are accustomed to do, showing the 
emotional heart of those extraordinary people. 

Of course, Washburne was in a most dan- 
gerous position. But apparently he enjoyed 
it. A sense of humour is not the least of the 
equipment of an American diplomat. He 
said, whimsically: 

"To-day I found they were mining the 
streets. Pleasant little neighbourhood this. 
As I came home this evening I found them 
erecting a barricade. * * * So in a day or two 
we shall be between the upper and the nether 
millstones, besides being in a capital position 
to have a bomb fall upon us." 

All honour to Elihu B. Washburne. He 
upheld the traditions of Gouverneur Morris, 
who established the precedents of disinterested 
effort, and was a worthy representative of the 



72 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

principles of duty and service without designs 
of reward or advantage which has come to be 
the crowning precept of American diplomacy. 



CHAPTER SIX 

THE BEARDING OF BONAPARTE. 
A LESSON IN SEA-POWER 

Napoleon Steals Louisiana from the "Prince of 
Peace" and Organizes an Invasion of America Out of 
His Victorious Armies Led by Marshal Victor of the 
"Terrible Regiment" — Thomas Jefferson, Pacifist, 
Turns a Political Somersault — Rufus King Holds a 
Momentous Conference in London — Robert Living- 
ston Throws a Challenge in the Face of a Great Con- 
queror — Napoleon in His Bath-Tub Makes History 
— James Monroe Goes to Purchase a Town and Re- 
turns with a Kingdom — America Saved by the Brit- 
ish Fleet. 

THROUGH the streets of Paris passed 
the splendid detachment of a victorious 
army to the roll of exultant drums. 
From balconies and towers bright banners 
were flung to the breeze. Along the quais and 
boulevards the excited populace cheered and 

sang and danced. They were drunk with the 

7a 



74 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

delight of a world composed entirely of fabu- 
lous deeds and the wildest dreams of conquest 
and adventure. At every tavern could be 
found some veteran of forty battles, some hum- 
ble Hannibal, equal to the mightiest of myth- 
ical heroes, telling his Odyssy. He fascinated 
the company with stories of the loot of cities 
and the flight of armies; the pageantry and 
treasures of the ancient kingdoms and the mys- 
terious deserts laid at his feet in his incredible 
journeys. Fired to a frenzy by visions of des- 
tiny and glory more magnificent than ever 
conceived by Alexander, every child in France 
was parading his yard with a wooden sword 
and a white cockade, while his father packed 
his haversack and burnished his blade in pure 
dehght of the coming argosy. 

An empire was to be added to the diadem. 
And old grenadiers shook with anguish for 
fear they might be left behind in the expedi- 
tion. For it was to be led by a tiger of a man, 
the fury of whose onsets left even Massena 
petrified with astonishment and admiration. 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 75 

A bloody and furious man in combat, but one 
cool and calculating in council. A master of 
artillery, taught by the one great master. To 
wit, a commander of Toulon, Laon, Dego, 
La Favorita; a hero of Rivoli, the conqueror 
at Mantua, leader of the "Terrible Regiment," 
veteran of Lodi and Areola; in short, a cap- 
tain of men, Victor Perrin, a Marshal of 
France. 

The ships were at the shore. And it may 
interest the pacifists of Milwaukee to know that 
their beautiful neighbourhood was the objective 
of this crusade. New Orleans, the broad basin 
of the Mississippi, the fair fields of Kansas, 
the margins of the Great Lakes, and then 
eventually Canada and the Citadel of Quebec 
— these constituted no idle dream in the minds 
of the scalers of the Alps and the conquerors 
of Venice. 

The danger that threatened the United 
States at this moment was the greatest it has 
ever faced. Napoleon Bonaparte's restless 
ambition, stirred by the recollection of the 



76 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

former power of France in America had con- 
ceived the idea of reclaiming the ancient dis- 
coveries of La Salle and striking at England 
through the valleys of the great river. He 
was setting forth upon the operation, which 
Theodore Lyman says justly and emphatically 
belonged to the first class of profound com- 
prehensive plans. He had at his command the 
finest army in the world. To dream even that 
our hasty lines of volunteers could meet this 
super-soldier and his veterans of twenty vic- 
torious pitched battles would be ridiculous. 
For a few months of his extraordinary reign he 
was at peace with the world, and had under his 
orders the combined fleets of France and 
Spain to transport his stores and his army. 

He was to make his landing at New Or- 
leans. This in itself would have been simple 
enough, much as it might infuriate this coun- 
try. For New Orleans belonged ostensibly to 
Spain, but really to him. He was coming 
under colour of title. But more to the point, 
from a military point of view, he would be 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 77 

landing where he already had possession, and 
could meet with no opposition. 

The United States was in an uproar. The 
more so that they did not know what to expect. 
For while the soldier prepared to strike, he em- 
ployed a professional liar, an inscrutable and 
double-faced poker player named Talleyrand, 
to temporize and conceal his intentions. This 
gentleman, who held the position of Minister 
for Foreign Affairs, acted accordingly. 

At the time this scheme was concocted, New 
Orleans, including both banks of the Missis- 
sippi for some miles, as well as the coast of 
the Gulf of Mexico to Florida, and the entire 
country west of the river, belonged to Spain. 
This was in the year 1800. Although it be- 
longed to Spain without a question, the hardy 
frontiersmen west of the Blue Ridge had de- 
termined to seize it, willy-nilly, and the govern- 
ment at Washington, albeit an ultra-demo- 
cratic and pacific administration, was obliged 
to take the same view. They were straining 
every nerve to buy New Orleans, or make some 



78 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

sort of Bryanite compromise that would keep 
the Westerners from invading the town. 
They were not in such a fearful hurry, because 
any one could see that Spain was on the de- 
cline, and would lose the territory sooner or 
later from pure senility and impotence. 

At the court of Spain was a crafty and 
clever rascal named Godoy, who boasted the 
title of "The Prince of Peace." He was the 
favourite of the Queen, and had control of the 
tiller of state, the King being little better than 
a nincompooj), and as helpless as a ward in 
chancery. Wlien Napoleon made one of his 
dynamic decisions to secure Louisiana, it was 
to this bounder that he made his proposition. 
It was an offer to buy. Very much the same 
sort of proposition the Standard Oil is cred- 
ited with having made in its palmy days: 
"You'll take what I give you, for your health." 

What he offered was the Kingdom of Etru- 
ria for the Royal Spanish Duke of Parma and 
one of Talleyrand's celebrated promises that 
France would not sell Louisiana to any one 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 79 

else. That the Kingdom of Etruria belonged 
to the Duke of Tuscany, and that Talleyrand's 
promises were an international joke made no 
difference to Napoleon. The Prince of Peace 
squirmed and stalled. John Adams, who 
knew everything, and wrote it in his diary, says 
he was as cool and adroit as a picador ma- 
noeuvring before a maddened bull. He bribed 
Lucien Bonaparte, the First Consul's brother, 
who had been sent to close the deal. He put 
off the signing of the deed by every subterfuge 
known to diplomacy. Napoleon knew how to 
handle this. Whatever he was, he was not a 
bluffer. His next dispatch was in his most 
masterful style: 

"It is at the moment when the First Con- 
sul gives such strong proofs of his considera- 
tion for the King of Spain and places a prince 
of his house upon the throne which is fruit of 
the victories of French arms, that a tone is 
taken toward the French Republic such as 
might be taken with impunity toward the Re- 
public of San Marino." 



80 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

This, from a man whose cannon balls in- 
variably followed his dispatches, was too much 
for the Prince of Peace. He had the deed 
made without delay, and delivered, as agreed, 
in the greatest secrecy. Needless to add that 
the Duke of Parma never got his kingdom, and 
that the other promise was never even noticed 
thereafter. 

Napoleon then notified Decres, his Minis- 
ter of Marine, that his intention was to take 
possession of Louisiana in the shortest possible 
time, and gave orders as follows : 

"Let me know the number of men you think 
necessary, both infantry and artillery. Pre- 
sent me a plan for organizing the colony, both 
military and civil, for works, fortifications, etc. 
Make a map of the coast from St. Augustine to 
Mexico, and a geographical description of the 
different counties of Louisiana, with resources 
of each." 

He then sent 10,000 men and a famous gen- 
eral to subdue the Island of Santo Domingo 
for a base and, as we have seen, began mobil- 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 81 

izing a splendid corps under Marshal Victor 
for the main event. 

Meanwhile, we had as minister in Paris one 
of the ablest of the galaxy of Revolutionary 
stars. Robert R. Livingston, of the famous 
New York family, was of ambassadorial cali- 
bre second to none. He began to suspect this 
transfer. He knew at all events that some 
dangerous intrigue was in the air. He wrote 
to James Madison, Secretary of State, on 
January 13, 1802: 

"By the secrecy and duplicity practised rel- 
ative to this object, it is clear to me that they 
apprehend some opposition on the part of 
America to their plans. 

"There never was a government where less 
could be done by negotiations than here. 
There are no people, no legislature, no coun- 
sellors. One man is everything. * * * He 
seldom asks advice and never hears it unasked. 
His ministers are mere clerks, and his legisla- 
ture and counsellors parade officers." 

There it is. Historically it is small wonder 



82 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

we are throwing our weight against the Hohen- 
zollerns. Since the beginning of the Repub- 
hc the one-man despotism has been incessantly 
planning om* destruction in secret. It is now 
our final determination to be rid of predatory 
powers that consult neither parliaments nor 
peoples, and apart from the principles in- 
volved, hard historical experience has shown us 
that it is only from such as these that our demo- 
cratic government and our peaceful country is 
endangered. N'apoleon was the first. The 
Kaiser is the last. But there were many in be- 
tween, of whom, more hereafter. 

Thomas Jefferson was President. Pas- 
sionately followed by many, and hated with 
fury by others from that day to this, he was 
the founder of the great school of government 
of which Woodrow Wilson is the latest ex- 
ponent. The careers of the two men in the 
presidential chair bear a striking resemblance. 

In domestic affairs Jefferson was the de- 
voted champion of "the plain people," whose 
ambition to translate the simple philosophy of 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 83 

Christian justice and fair dealing into legisla- 
tive enactment was the more startling to en- 
trenched "special privilege" because with all 
his democratic convictions he rode a pusillani- 
mous Congress with an iron bit and cruel spurs. 

In foreign affau's he believed with the paci- 
fists that armies and navies were useless. He 
also held the opinion, derived from his dislike 
of their manners, that the English were a peo- 
ple to be rude to. Otherwise his idea of di- 
plomacy consisted of sympathy for the French 
Revolution and an uneasy conscience with re- 
gard to his impossible Spanish-American 
neighbours. 

He was unable to reconcile their haughty 
unreasonableness, his constituent's warlike in- 
tentions, and his own earnest desires for the 
"rule of reason." 

When he received the intelligence from Liv- 
ingston that Napoleon had secretly purchased 
the Middle West and the mouth of the Missis- 
sippi he turned a political and philosophical 
somersault. Those who supposed, because 



84 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

he was patient and tolerant that he was weak, 
or because he was mistaken that he had to be 
consistent, were given a shock. He called for 
80,000 volunteers. He began to build his 
navy. He saw and acted upon the one obvious 
and constant proposition in our whole diplo- 
matic history. Which was — and is — that the 
only force on earth that prevented our humilia- 
tion at will was the navy of Great Britain. 
And he forgot all about his "no alliance" shib- 
boleth, and his antipathy to the snug little 
island. 

The historian says that he attempted to gain 
Louisiana by intimidation and guile. And 
adds that "when Bonaparte was the one to be 
frightened and Talleyrand the one to be hood- 
winked, the naivete of the proceedings becomes 
rather ludicrous." 

The only reason this view was ever adopted 
has been that our chroniclers have been loath 
to grant the inestimable obligation we were un- 
der to the English. It was not a bluff that 
Jefferson made even though birds were still 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 85 

roosting in the pines that were to make his 
navy, and 80,000 soldiers were still on paper. 
He made a threat — and a threat so powerful 
that even Napoleon might think twice before 
he defied it. 

But first he had recourse to London. From 
Rufus King, at that capital, he obtained the 
artillery for his defence. King informed him 
that Mr. Addington, then Secretary for For- 
eign Affairs, had frankly stated that in case 
a war should happen, it would be one of Eng- 
land's first steps to take New Orleans. He 
made it very plain that they would not keep it, 
but that they would give it to the L^nited 
States. He concluded that America could rest 
assured that nothing should be done injurious 
to her interests. 

So Mr. Jefferson, armed with the control of 
the Atlantic, and the guns of his brother, be- 
gan a diplomatic duel with the Young Con- 
queror. He sent James Monroe to Paris on 
March 8, 1803, with instructions to buy New 



86 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

Orleans. So much for the rule of reason. 
His intimidation was conveyed in another doc- 
ument, by no means either naive or ludicrous. 
It said: 

"If the French Government, instead of 
friendly arrangements or views, should be 
found to meditate hostilities, or to have formed 
projects, which will constrain the United States 
to resort to hostilities, such communications are 
then to be held with the British Government, 
as will sound its dispositions and invite its con- 
currence in the war. * *' *" 

A later dispatch of Jefferson's shows that 
the eternal struggle against despotism is not 
new, and that it is no novelty to find the Anglo- 
Saxon shoulder to shoulder with America in 
the cause : 

"From the moment that France takes pos- 
session of New Orleans * * we must marry 
ourselves to the British Fleet and Nation. We 
must turn all our attention to a maritime force, 
* * and having formed and connected to- 
gether with a power which may render rein- 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 87 

forcements of her settlement here impossible 
to France, make the first cannon which shall 
be fired in Europe the signal for the tearing 
up of any settlement she may have made, and 
for holding the two continents of America in 
sequestration for the common purposes of the 
United British and American Nations." 

But at this point the analogy between the 
Kaiser and Napoleon ends. The Little Cor- 
poral made his decisions like lightning. But 
if they were wrong, like lightning he reversed 
them. And it didn't take him three years to 
find out his mistakes. 

Let us now return to Paris, where the expe- 
ditionary legion was expected hourly to start, 
and where a popular assembly was pointing 
with pride to a great new dominion. 

For a moment, that bright morning of April 
7th, all was quiet on the Place de la Con- 
corde. Ministers had an hour's breathing 
spell. Pages might yawn behind the statuary. 
The brilhant-coated guards might stand at 
ease, and couriers, booted and spurred, snatch 



88 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

a drink and a kiss at the Sign of the Dead Rat. 
An unwonted cakn pervaded the ancient palace 
of the wicked Catherine de Medicis. For the 
Great Napoleon was taking his bath. 

If I am obliged to introduce this incompar- 
able soldier, this astute diplomat, this "Prince 
of Adventurers," clad in no greater majesty 
than water pearly and aromatic with salts and 
perfumes, it is not my fault. It is there that 
history discovers him, disclosing for the first 
time high reasons of state why the Conqueror 
of the World will not face T. Jefferson and his 
four frigates drawn up in dry-dock in the inter- 
ests of Universal Peace. 

There was a scratch on the door. It was his 
valet Rustan's signal. The door opened, and 
in went two brothers of the bathing Consul. 
They were Lucien and Joseph. They had 
heard some rumour that Louisiana was to be 
deserted. They rushed up in the name of the 
Chamber of Deputies to forbid the alienation 
of the people's territory. Ensued a scene not 
only illuminating the diplomatic contest under 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 89 

review, but instructive of the arbitrary meth- 
ods which were at once Napoleon's grandeur 
and his curse : 

"After some prehminary discussion Joseph 
at last broke in quite brusquely : 

" 'Well, you say nothing about your famous 
plan.' 

" 'Yes,' said the First Consul, * * * 'only 
take note, Lucien, I have made up my mind 
to sell Louisiana to the Americans. * * * ' 

" ' * * * But it is too unconstitutional.' 

"These precise words were then thundered 
forth, according to Lucien Bonaparte's ac- 
count : • 

"'Constitution! Unconstitutional! Repub- 
lic! National Sovereignty! Great words — 
fine phrases! Do you think you are still at 
the Club of St. Maximin? We are past that, 
you had better believe. Parbleu! You phrase 
it nobly. Unconstitutional! It becomes you 
well. Sir Knight of the Constitution, to talk 
that way to me. * * * Go on — go on. That's 
quite too fine a thing to be cut short, Sir Ora- 



90 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

tor of the Clubs. But at the same time take 
note of this, you and Monsieur Joseph, that 
I shall do just as I please; that I detest with- 
out fearing them — your friends the Jacobins, 
not one of whom shall remain in France if, as 
I hope, things continue to rest in my hands — 
and that, in fine, I snap my fingers at you and 
your national representation.' " 

If this is illuminating in showing the gentle 
democratic nature of the gentleman we had to 
deal with, another passage of the same conver- 
sation settles definitely why he proposed to re- 
linquish this kingdom: 

" 'It was certainly worth while,' urged Na- 
poleon, 'first, to sell when you could what you 
were certain to lose. For the English, who 
have seen the Colony given back to us with 
great displeasure, are aching for a chance to 
capture it, and it will be their first coup de 
main in case of war. * * * You see our land 
forces have fought and will fight victoriously 
against all Europe. But as to the sea, my 
dear fellow, you must know that there we have 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 91 

to lower the flag — we and all the powers on the 

continent. America perhaps some day ; 

but I'll not talk of that. The English navy is 
and long will be too dominant; we shall not 
equal it.' " 

So it appears that the First Consul was en- 
tirely of Jefferson's opinion. And that Jeffer- 
son was quite right in his violent determination 
not to have him as a neighbour, that is, if bland 
contempt for parliaments and constitutions 
was one sign of a citizen undesirable in Mon- 
tana, then as now. 

Napoleon had one kind of intelligence sel- 
dom granted to those of intrenched authority 
— whether political or financial. He could see 
the storm coming, and could yield in time with 
grace and enthusiasm. Talk had no interest 
for him. 

So he called in the Marquis de Barbe-Mar- 
bois, one-time Minister to the United States 
and jerked out some of his pithy phrases at 
him: 

"I know the worth of Louisiana. * * * I 



92 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

have recovered it on paper through some lines 
in a treaty; but I have hardly done so when 
I am about to lose it again. The English 

* * * have already twenty vessels in the Gulf 
of Mexico. They swagger over those seas as 
sovereigns. * * * The conquest of Louisiana 
will be easy if they will only take the trouble 
to descend upon it, * * * even a short delay 
will leave me nothing but a vain title to trans- 
mit to those Republicans, whose friendship I 
seek. Irresolution and deliberation are no 
longer in season. It is not only New Orleans 
I will cede ; it is the whole colony without reser- 
vation. * * * I direct you to negotiate this 
affair with the envoys of the United States 

* * * have an interview this very day with 
Mr. Livingston. * * * I want 50,000,000 
francs, and for less than that sum I will not 
treat." 

It now developed upon Livingston and 
James Monroe, who had been sent to collabo- 
rate with him, to conduct this momentous proj- 
ect with Barbe-Marbois. They had instmc- 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 93 

tions to buy New Orleans. They had the Brit- 
ish Fleet up their sleeves. But those who 
presume that our ambassadors have been an 
ornamental and negligible quantity in the fate 
of this country would do well to observe that 
these men, weeks away from home, took upon 
themselves the purchase of this great territory 
without a scrap of orders. The details of these 
ambassadorial contests always have a great 
interest. 

Livingston describes the opening thus: 
"While he (Monroe) and several other gentle- 
men were at dinner with me, I observed the 
Minister of the Treasury walking in my gar- 
den. * * * While we were taking coffee he 
came in, and after being some time in the room, 
we strolled into the next room, when he told 
me * * * that he thought I might have some- 
thing particular to say to him, and had taken 
the first opportunity to call on me." 

We have the advantage of Livingston as the 
great international bargain began. The be- 
ginning was ingenious enough, considering 



94 DKAMATIC MOMENTS 

that Barbe-Marbois had Napoleon's order to 
sell without delay. But Livingston and Mon- 
roe didn't know that. And they proceeded to 
the point and "stated the consequence of any 
delay on this subject, as it would enable Britain 
to take possession, who would readily relin- 
quish it to us." 

Barbe-Marbois countered with his version of 
Napoleon's conversation. He reported the 
First Consul to have said: "Well, you have 
charge of the treasury, let them give you one 
hundred million, and pay their own claims and 
take the whole country." 

Right then and there, to all intents and pur- 
poses, this tremendous matter determining the 
destiny of our country was as good as settled. 
The commissioners knew that they had won. 
The negotiations now descended from the 
plane of battle and wars and dynasties into a 
first-rate bargain-counter dispute as to price. 
Monroe determined to go as far as 50,000,000 
francs on his own responsibility. He offered 
forty. 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 95 

On April 30th, 1803, the convention was 
signed. James Monroe and Robert R. Liv- 
ingston had been sent to buy a town. They 
brought back a kingdom richer than Babylon 
and broader than France. The price was 
60,000,000 francs, and the assumption by the 
United States of the then existing claims of 
Americans against France for depredations on 
the high seas. 

From the great champion of Continental 
tyranny in the Nineteenth Century had been 
wrung the training ground whence in the 
Twentieth were to come armies to help deal the 
final blow to that same kind of tyranny. 



CHAPTER SEVEN 

THE HUMILIATION OF IMPO- 
TENCE. A STUDY IN PIRACY 

The "Shadow of God" and "Emulator of Alexander" 
Writes a Dispatch to "The Amiable James Monroe, 
Emperor of America" — Courtly Frightfulness, vs. 
Truculent Pacifism — John Adams has a Pleasant 
Chat with a Pirate in London — An Algerian Price 
List of American Sailors — Boston Mariners Left in 
Turkish Slavery — The Diplomatic Triumph of a 
Courteous Murderer — Blackmail the Alternative of 
a Navy — The Portrait of George Washington — 
Stephen Decatur Demonstrates the Persuasive Value 
of Gunpowder in Diplomatic Discourse. 

DURING the year 1816 the President 
of the United States received an 
amiable and condescending message 
from a subaltern of the greatest person that 
ever lived. That is, if we can believe his own 
modest description of himself, constituting the 

96 



DRAMATIC MOMENTS 97 

leading paragraph of the wonderful letter: 
"With the aid and assistance of Divinity, 
and in the reign of our sovereign, the asylum 
of the world, powerful and great monarch, 
transactor of all good actions, the best of men, 
the shadow of God, director of the good order. 
King of Kings, supreme ruler of the world. 
Emperor of the Earth, emulator of Alexander 
the Great, possessor of great forces, sovereign 
of the two worlds and of the seas. King of 
Arabia and Persia, Emperor, son of an Em- 
peror and Conqueror, Mohammed Khan (may 
God end his life with prosperity, and his reign 
be everlasting and glorious), his humble and 
obedient servant, actual sovereign governor 
and Chief of Algiers, submitted for ever to 
the orders of his Imperial Majesty's noble 
throne, Omar Pasha (may his government be 
happy and prosperous) . 

"To his Majesty, the Emperor of America, 
its adjacent dependent provinces and coasts, 
and wherever his government may extend, our 
noble friend, the support of the Kings of the 



98 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

Nation of Jesus, the pillar of all Christian sov- 
ereigns, the most glorious among the princes, 
elected amongst many lords and nobles, the 
happy, the great, the amiable James Madison, 
Emperor of America (may his reign be happy 
and glorious, and his life long and prosper- 
ous), wishing him long possession of the seal 
of his blessed throne, and long life and health. 
Amen. Hoping that your health is in good 
state, I inform you that mine is excellent, 
thanks to the Supreme Being, constantly ad- 
dressing my humble prayers to the Almighty 
for your felicity." 

Could anything be more polite and ingra- 
tiating than this ? 

He continued in the same pleasant and 
genial vein to say that he had been delighted 
to receive the American Ambassador ( Stephen 
Decatur, who had arrived with the guns of 
three warships trained on the palace) and to 
make a treaty such as he suggested. But he 
regretted to say that for a slight objection this 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 99 

treaty was not entirely "practical" and, in con- 
sequence : 

"I inform you, therefore, that a treaty of 
peace having been signed between America 
and us, during the reign of Hassan Pasha, 
twenty years past, I propose to renew said 
treaty on the same basis stipulated in it, and 
if you agree to it, our friendship will be solid 
and lasting. 

"I intended to be on higher terms of amity 
with our friends the Americans than ever be- 
fore, being the first nation with whom I made 
peace; * * * we hope that with the assistance 
of God you will answer this our letter, imme- 
diately after you shall have a perfect knowl- 
edge of its contents. * * * 

"Requesting only that you will have the 
goodness to remove your consul as soon as pos- 
sible, assuring you that it will be very agree- 
able to us. These are our last words to you, 
and we pray God to keep you in his holy guard. 

"Written in the year of the Hegira 1231, 



100 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

the 20th day of the moon Dge Mazirl Covel, 
corresponding to 1815, April 24ith. Signed 
in our well-beloved city of Algiers. 

"Omar, Son of Mohammed, 

Conquerer and Great." 

We recommend this dispatch to our friend 
Francisco Villa, and other kindred spirits of 
the chaparral, as an improvement on their 
own method of communication. They need 
not be too proud to receive lessons in procedure 
from Omar, Son of Mohammed. As a practi- 
tioner of the Trade of Frightf ulness and a suc- 
cessful follower of the business of freebooting, 
he still remains without a peer. Beside him 
the Mexican is a kindergarten teacher. It is 
true that Omar was a seafaring man. But all 
the more must have been his natural tempta- 
tion to use dreadful and furious language. 
Being a master in the pastime of robbing and 
enslaving trustful and helpless Americans, he 
must have had some weighty diplomatic reason 
for the poetical and gentle nature of his 
dispatches. 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 101 

It is a strange thing that every generation 
has to learn its lessons by experience. Even 
a slight study of the career of the Dey of Al- 
giers would have saved two classes of modern 
theorists a great deal of brain fag and needless 
expensive experiments. To the believer in the 
doctrines of the divine right of plunder and the 
joys of running amuck, the learned Moslem 
would have taught that the most efficient vocal 
accompaniment is by no means nasty language, 
bluff, bluster, and threats. On the contrary, 
these have a way of arousing and multiplying 
enemies beyond endurance. The proper way 
is to be polite- — and to speak in tones so exces- 
sively soft and reasonable, not to say flatter- 
ing, that only the basest sceptic can doubt 
their beneficence. 

The other class of theorists would have 
ceased to exist upon such a study. These are 
the ever-increasing lovers of humanity who 
carry the principles of fair play and justice to 
the conclusion that, if let alone, "all men" will 
respond in kind, and who believe in conse- 



102 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

quence that any resort to force for the protec- 
tion of the lives and property of citizens is 
foolish in policy, if not wicked in morals. 

Before being disillusioned by the apparition 
of Napoleon and the assumption of responsi- 
bility, which is a great dispeller of illusions, 
Thomas Jefferson might fairly be catalogued 
among the latter class. His chief abomination 
was a navy, and the foundation of his faith that 
ultimate good-will was to be found in all men 
who were fairly treated. Those who believe 
the same to-day will be sorry to learn how this 
worked in Algiers. 

The entertaining dispatch above quoted 
came along toward the end of the chapter, and 
is given more as an example of a diplomatic 
curiosity than as part of the story. But in this 
connection it is worth observing that this cheer- 
ful document was in exact fact an ultimatum 
from this jovial despot to the effect that he 
would immediately waylay and capture all 
American merchantmen venturing beyond 
Gibraltar and enslave the crews in lieu of a big 



IN AMEHICAN DIPLOMACY 103 

ransom, unless the United States agreed to pay 
him a small matter of $21,000 a year tribute, as 
we had paid the late lamented Hassan Pasha 
(may the grace of God rest his beautiful soul) . 
That an Algerian pirate on the sands of Africa 
should have had the nerve to address such a 
demand, even in poetic prose, to the President 
of the United States, involves a disgraceful 
story, which we certainly would not print, ex- 
cept for the benefit of the theorists and pacifists 
aforementioned. And to prove for our own 
satisfaction the impotence of language as the 
only national ordnance. At the same time the 
delicate attention paid our envoys and the 
courtly language of the pirate's communica- 
tions make a picture so charming as almost to 
spoil the moral. 

The Dey of Algiers, the Emperor of Mo- 
rocco, the Bey of Tripoli, and Hamouda 
Pasha, a ruler of Tunis, under the firm name of 
the Barbary States, constituted in themselves 
the foremost and most celebrated institute of 
piracy ever seen on the globe. Operating from 



104 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

scenes famous since the dim ages of the Argo- 
nauts, from among the ruins of the most splen- 
did kingdoms of antiquity, along those dreamy 
shores of the Mediterranean "where may be 
traced the track of the hero of more than one 
epic," the fleet corsairs of these mediaeval sul- 
tans made a romantic picture and added variety 
and interest to those fond of wild adventure 
and desperate escapes. To all others that 
passed through the Pillars of Hercules they 
were a curse and terror. The sight of their 
sails and the Turk's Head on the horizon was 
signal for utter despair. The barest record 
of their atrocities would not bear repetition. 

In the year 1783 the jolly old Dey was as- 
tonished to observe a new flag serenely sailing 
down the coast. No armoured convoy was in 
sight. His treasurer recorded no goodty tri- 
bute giving license to Stars and Stripes to sail 
the seas. The impudence of the performance 
was astounding. Hardly conceiving that good 
fortune of such easy prey could continue, the 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 105 

Dey held communion with his partners. The 
immediate result was a conversation in Lon- 
don between John Adams and a suave and 
tawny gentleman from Tripoli "who addressed 
him with much condescension and patronage." 
Johnson goes on to say that "the Tripolitan 
conceded that America might be a great coun- 
try, but he pointed out that its ships could not 
navigate the Mediterranean Sea without the 
permission of the Barbary States. He was 
willing to negotiate a treaty between the 
United States and Tripoli for $150,000, or with 
all four of the Barbary States for $600,000." 
When Adams tried to reduce the price, the 
Corsair in the most urbane manner suggested 
that he had actually forgotten the most im- 
portant item of all, a small matter of 10% for 
himself. 

The feelings of sturdy old John Adams 
must have been apoplectic in being compelled 
to conduct such a negotiation — and all the 
more at its failure. For while Congress would 



106 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

not fight, it could not pay any such sum as 
this. But if this blackmail was bad, worse 
was to come. 

In the following July the long-suffering 
Dey sent forth eight sails through the Strait 
of Gibraltar on a merry hunt. These fell in 
with the schooner Maria, of Boston. Scim- 
itar in hand the buccaneers swarmed over the 
rail and had Isaac Stephens, captain, Alex 
Forsythe, mate, and six Gloucester sea- 
men tied hand and foot without time to strug- 
gle. The good ship Dauphin, of Philadelphia, 
fell foul of the outfit on the way home. The 
delighted Corsair captain confiscated the Yan- 
kee boats and the cargoes and packed the 
twenty-one sailors as slaves into the interior — 
and waited. 

It is disgusting to relate that instead of a 
broadside of round shot, after so long a time 
there turned up among the minarets two "am- 
bassadors" sent by Adams from London, 
Messrs. Lamb and Randall. The old pirate 
received them with great ceremony and marked 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 107 

hospitality. He was very attentive and agree- 
able. He opened the conversation by saying 
that he had followed with interest the exploits 
of their illustrious countryman, General Wash- 
ington, and felt a great admiration of his con- 
duct. That since he never expected to see him, 
if Congress would do him the favour to send 
him a full-length portrait of that celebrated 
person, he would hang it in a good light in his 
palace at Algiers. 

In regard to the captives, the Dey was as 
cordial as any good merchant to a valuable 
customer. He allowed that captives were be- 
coming more and more expensive to get, but 
that he would make a special discount for 
the sake of new trade, and concluded with a 
magnanimous schedule of prices, as fol- 
lows: 

8 Captains, $6,000 each , $18,000 

2 Mates, $4,000 each ,. . 8,000 

2 Passengers, $4,000 each ., 8,000 

14 Seamen, $1,400 each (a bargain). 19,600 

$53,600 



108 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

Expense of Catching and Keeping 

Aforesaid 5,896 



Total BiU $59,496 

The Americans had been authorized to pay 
$200 apiece. Failing to purchase back their 
countrymen, they tried to beg them back. 

The American sailors were left in slavery. 

Whether this inconceivable action was the 
result of a "peace policy" or of the theory then 
prevailing against the building of a fleet, it is 
equally disgraceful. The diplomats of the pe- 
riod had their fill of endeavours to treat with 
brigands without any recourse to force. Their 
next move was more humiliating still. Failing 
themselves, they turned to a European "So- 
ciety for the Redemption of Captives," a holy 
order that made a business of alleviating as far 
as possible the horrors of this bondage in Tur- 
key. This order informed the Continental 
Congress that it would be of no use to try to 
get the prisoners for a reasonable sum if money 
and letters were continually sent to better their 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 109 

lot, because this gave the pirates an idea that 
they were "valuable." So the next step taken 
by this peace party was actually to refuse the 
modest drafts of a Spanish gentleman helping 
to keep life endurable for the slaves, and the 
issuance of strict instructions that the poor 
creatures should be made to suppose they had 
been left to their fate, the more to make the 
Dey anxious for his bargain. 

This didn't work either. 

Finally, on the 4th of March, 1789, George 
Washington was elected President of the 
United States. His inchnation on the subject 
was definite enough. But he is not the only 
conmiander-in-chief of the forces of the United 
States who has had to face a bad situation 
without any forces. Congress had recently 
taken the precaution to sell the only warship 
they owned, and had again commissioned the 
holy order to go and reason with the Moslems. 
Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State, now 
felt that these poor sailors had suffered enough. 
He commissioned John Paul Jones, of all peo- 



110 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

pie, to go on a mule to try once again to 
buy them back. How this suited the Captain 
of the Bonhomme Richard is not recorded — 
except that he died immediately, before he 
started. 

Meantime, half the wretched victims also 
had died, and the rest sent a plea to their coun- 
try that would have melted a stone Moloch. 
In 1793, the Dey had a banner year. He gath- 
ered in a hundred and five more American citi- 
zens. 

The utter futility of diplomatic action with 
these gentry had one obvious and beneficial re- 
sult. Public opinion in the country would no 
longer stand such a pitiful attitude. And 
when the patriarch of these enslaved mariners 
from Boston wrote, "Your Excellency will 
perceive, that the United States has at pres- 
ent no alternative, than to fit out with the 
greatest expedition thirty frigates and corsairs 
in order to stop those sea robbers in capturing 
American vessels," the navy of the United 
States was born. In 1794 Congress author- 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 111 

ized the President to build six frigates. Three 
of them were actually completed before that 
vahant body retracted — three that were des- 
tined to put the fear of God into more different 
kinds of scalawags than all the resolutions of 
Congress put together from that day to this — 
the Constitution, the United States and the 
Constellation, 

They were not done in time, however, to 
keep us from paying the cordial old Dey 
$642,500 cash, commissions, presents, etc., for 
the release of American citizens, and for sign- 
ing what he called a treaty. By this document 
he agreed to let American ships sail in peace — 
and we agreed to give him a matter of $21,000 
worth of naval stores and other friendly little 
gratuities every year. 

The amazing attitude of "forbearance" and 
supine pacifism taken by our government was 
not ended even then. The following incident, 
related by Lyman, seems almost incredible — in- 
credible that the government would tolerate it. 

"In October, 1800, the Dey signified to the 



112 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

(American) Consul his intention of sending 
an ambassador to the Porte, with the custom- 
ary presents, in the Washington, a small 
American frigate, at that time lying in the har- 
bour of Algiers. It may well be imagined that 
the proposal was an awkward and offensive 
one. The United States had neither consul 
nor minister at Constantinople, nor any sort 
of treaty with any of the Itahan states, with 
some of whom Algiers was then at war. * * * 
To the representations, both judicious and rea- 
sonable, made on this occasion, the Dey threat- 
ened war, plunder, and captivity, and declared 
he had selected the Washington to transport 
the embassy as a special compliment. * * * 
The proclamation of his Highness's pleasure 
was further accompanied with another pro- 
posal, also of an embarrassing nature, to hoist 
the piratical flag of the Algerines at the main 
top gallant mast head of the frigate. It was 
in vain the barbarian was informed that the 
act would throw the frigate out of commission ; 
neither the Dey nor his Minister of Marine 



. IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 113 

would curtail a tithe of the demand, and this 
Corsair flag, bearing the turbanned head of 
Hali, was run up to the main with a salute of 
seven guns — a compliment that cost the United 
States 40,000 dollars." 

There is one way, and only one, to treat with 
a certain class of persons. And they are met 
with periodically by all nations — as well as all 
men. Our old friend, Omar, Son of Moham- 
med, was one of these. And the proof of it is 
that when he finally got his treatment he 
ceased to be a leading figure in either buccaneer 
or diplomatic circles. 

It came about this way. Concluding that 
the $378,363 received by him and his illustrious 
predecessor Pasha was after all a paltry pit- 
tance to get out of such a healthy coward as 
the U. S. A., he concluded he would like to 
have $27,000 more. His annual gift also 
caused him some slight disappointment. So 
in the most polished manner he invited Mr. 
Lear, our consul, to depart at once, and sent 
forth his trusty admiral, Ruis Hammida, Son 



114. DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

of the Desert, with the whole Algerine Squad- 
ron to kidnap some more Yankees. 

But he selected an unfortunate moment. 
This was in 1812, and American merchantmen 
were not venturing abroad. He got a bag of 
only eleven prisoners. But as soon as the war 
was over he learned his lesson, as mentioned 
above. While his pirate fleet was all at sea, 
one fine afternoon there appeared at the very 
gates of his palace the American Squadron, 
veterans of battles famous in history, com- 
manded by Commodore Bainbridge. And on 
board was a novel and unwelcome kind of dip- 
lomat, named Stephen Decatur. He was very 
brusque and rude to the "Asylum of the 
World." He said he had come to make a 
treaty, the principal article of which was that 
"no stipulation for paying any tribute to Al- 
giers under any form whatever will be agreed 
to." The outraged Son of Mohammed wanted 
time to consider it. "Not a minute," said De- 
catur. It being manifest that this rude am- 
bassador was looking forward with ill-con- 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 115 

cealed pleasure to operating his guns, by lunch 
time the outraged monarch signed the treaty. 

After the squadron left, the shrewd old sin- 
ner of course concluded that he had made a 
grave mistake in ever leaving his former graft. 
So he cooked up an excuse, drew his flotilla 
around him, and forthwith dispatched the dip- 
lomatic paper given at the beginning of this 
chapter. 

Further diplomatic discourse was inter- 
rupted by the arrival of Lord Exmouth with a 
British fleet of twenty sail. The Dey had 
come to believe his own description of his pow- 
ers, and had put the British Consul in jail. 
And without any preliminaries the Admiral 
opened twenty broadsides on the towers of Alg- 
iers, and knocked the place into a rubbish heap. 

After the receipt of fifty-one thousand 
round shot the Dey came out and swept the 
ground with his beard, opened up his jails, 
and turned cynic. One immediate conse- 
quence was his signature to a paper tendered 
him by Commodore Chaunccy, U. S. N., read- 
ing as follows : 



116 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

"The President of the United States and 
the Dey of Algiers, being desirous to restore 
and maintain, upon a stable and permanent 
footing, the relations of peace and good un- 
derstanding between the two powers, and for 
this purpose to renew the treatj^ of peace and 
amity which was concluded between the two 
states by William Shaler and Commodore 
Stephen Decatur * * * and his Highness 
Omar Pasha, Dey of Algiers * * * etc." 

It is hardly possible that this sort of game 
could be played on us again by so small a 
band of freebooters. But there is abundant 
evidence available that the process of evolution 
has not yet advanced the human race to the 
point where the same tactics are impossible in 
the hands of more powerful, if less courteous, 
marauders. And it is just as well to remem- 
ber that there is only one kind of diplomacy 
effective with such gentry. And one kind of 
diplomat, best exemplified in the person of 
Stephen Decatur. 



CHAPTER EIGHT 

THE BATTLE FOR DEMOCRACY. 
AN ANGLO-SAXON INHERITANCE 

George Canning Reveals a Plot for the Extermina- 
tion of Democracy — Richard Rush Sends James 
Monroe a Literary Bomb-Shell — The Emperors of 
Europe Combine for Conquest of America — The 
Duke of Wellington Proves a Tartar — England 
Makes a Proposition — Thomas Jefferson Proposes 
to Marry the British Fleet— The Solid Front of the 
Anglo-Saxon — James Monroe Throws Down a Chal- 
lenge to Royalty — Ambitions Sunk in the Waters of 
Trafalgar. 

EARLY in August, 1823, George Can- 
ning, Minister for Foreign Affairs of 
Great Britain, sent for Richard Rush, 
a representative of the United States, and in- 
formed him that the Holy AUiance, in the 
greatest secrecy, had determined to subjugate 
the Central and South American conmiunities 
that had recently revolted from Spain. 

117 



118 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

This was a startling revelation. 

To the American mind it would carry ter- 
rible consequences in its train. It meant the 
political control of America in the hands of the 
kings of Europe. It meant the forcible and 
final introduction of the monarchical system of 
government on this continent. It represented 
a death blow throughout the world to the ex- 
pansion of the right of revolution and the prin- 
ciples of the "will of the governed." And 
not least, the ultimate prospect that "we 
should have to fight upon our own shores for 
our own institutions." 

In order to realize the nature of the catas- 
trophe thus suddenly presented to our minis- 
ter, it is necessary to examine the nature, pur- 
pose, and power of this sanctimonious league. 

It consisted primarily of their majesties the 
Emperor of Austria, the King of Prussia, and 
the Czar of Russia, all three dominated by the 
"biggest rascal and liar" in Christendom, the 
celebrated Prince Metternich, Minister of Aus- 
tria. Every little while this "voting trust" of 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 119 

kings would meet under conditions of the most 
rigid secrecy and lay down the law to the world, 
make compacts, and establish principles, of 
which the following had been their latest and 
most definite: 

"Article I. The high contracting powers, 
being convinced that the system of representa- 
tive government is equally as incompatible with 
the monarchical principles as the maxim of the 
sovereignty of the people with the divine right, 
engage mutually, in the most solemn manner, 
to use all their efforts to put an end to the sys- 
tem of representative governments, in what- 
ever country it may exist in Europe, and to 
prevent its being introduced in those countries 
where it is not yet known." 

Every first-class power in Europe, except 
Turkey, was a party to this formidable combi- 
nation. It was a close corporation for the 
running of Christendom. 

Several slight impediments had developed in 
the proceedings. One was that the Duke of 
Wellington, the foremost soldier in the world. 



120 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

had got up and left the meeting in Verona. 
The other was that George Canning had writ- 
ten a most unsjnnpathetie note to this effect: 

"We disclaim for ourselves and deny for 
other powers the right of requiring any changes 
in the internal institutions of independent 
states, with the menace of hostile attack in 
case of refusal." 

Aside from these slight annoyances the Holy 
Alliance had so far been a grand success. It 
had stamped out a revolution and the strug- 
gling liberal government in Spain with the 
utmost rigour and dispatch. It had broken 
with vigour and cruelty the spirit of Italians 
rising against intolerable tyranny. 

Its deeds and its overwhelming power spoke 
to America in tones even more menacing than 
its treaties. And now the American Minister 
was informed that it proposed to take domin- 
ion over South America, on behalf of the King 
of Spain. 

This called for immediate and drastic de- 
fence of some sort. 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 121 

As a nation we have long since forgotten the 
part played in this crisis by Great Britain. 

Canning disclosed the danger. And Rush 
reported that he went on to say: "Events 
are hourly assuming new importance and 
urgency, under aspects to which neither of our 
governments can be insensible." * * * 'He 
had the strongest reasons for believing that the 
co-operation of the United States with Eng- 
land, through my (Rush's) instrumentality, 
afforded with promptitude, would ward off al- 
together the meditated jurisdiction of the Eu- 
ropean powers over the new world.' 

Rush, with the independence and self-assur- 
ance that have been characteristic of American 
diplomats, undertook to put forth the joint 
challenge to the world on the spot. If he had, 
it would have joined the forces of these two 
great countries in the fight for liberal govern- 
ment in a formal as well as merely inevitable 
manner. But he refused to do so on his own 
responsibility, because Canning at the same 
time would not agree immediately to recognize 



122 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

the independence of all the revolted Spanish 
provinces. 

So the information was dispatched with all 
speed to the Department of State. And with 
it Canning's formal proposal that England 
and the United States jointly announce in the 
"face of the world" that : 

"We conceive the recoveries of the Colonies 
by Spain to be hopeless. * * * We aim not at 
the possession of any portion of them our- 
selves. We could not see any portion of them 
transferred to any other power with indiffer- 
ence." 

This meant, of course, that such an action 
would be the signal for bloody war. 

When James Monroe, President of the 
United States, received these dispatches he 
ceased to be interested in anything else. Ob- 
viously the action to be taken would have a 
paramount influence upon the future of the 
world. So he wrote to consult Thomas Jeffer- 
son, Nestor of America, in his retreat at Mon- 
ticello, saying: 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 123 

*'I transmit to you two dispatches which 
were received from Mr. Rush which involve 
interests of the highest importance. They con- 
tain two letters from Mr. Canning suggesting 
designs of the Holy Alliance against the in- 
dependence of South America, and proposing 
a co-operation between Great Britain and the 
United States in support of it against the 
members of that alHance. * * * Has not the 
epoch arrived when Great Britain must take 
her stand either on the side of the monarchs of 
Europe or of the United States, and in conse- 
quence either in favour of despotism or of lib- 
erty? * * * My own impression is that we 
ought to meet the proposal of the British Gov- 
ernment." 

Jefferson's reply is peculiarly interesting in 
the light of recent events : 

"The question presented by the letters you 
have sent me is the most momentous which has 
ever been offered to my contemplation since 
that of independence. That made us a nation ; 
this sets our compass and points the course 



124 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

which we are to steer through the ocean of time 
opening on us. * * * America, North and 
South, has a set of interests distinct from those 
of Europe. She should therefore have a sys- 
tem of her own, separate and apart from that 
of Europe. While the last is labouring to be- 
come the domicile of despotism, our endeavour 
should surely be to make our hemisphere that 
of freedom. 

"One nation, most of all, could disturb us in 
this pursuit; she now offers to lead, aid, and 
accompany us in it. By acceding to her prop- 
osition, we detach her from the bands, bring 
her mighty weight into the scale of free gov- 
ernment, and emancipate a continent at one 
stroke, which might otherwise linger long in 
doubt and difficulty. Great Britain is the one 
nation which can do us the most harm of any 
one, on all the earth ; and with her on our side 
we need not fear the whole world. With her, 
then, we should most sedulously cherish a cor- 
dial friendship and nothing would tend more 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 125 

to knit our affections than to be fighting once 
more, side by side, in the same cause." 

As I write this, nearly a hundred years later, 
the daily paper before me announces in great 
headlines the wild enthusiasm greeting the ar- 
rival of the first American troops in London. 
They are there to fight once more, side by side, 
in the same cause. The same old cause, against 
despotism. They are now keeping faith with 
George Canning, who "emancipated a conti- 
nent at one stroke." Curiously enough, the 
old Revolutionary patriot seems even to have 
foreseen the scream of the doubter who in sim- 
ilar circumstances cries out against fighting for 
England. He goes on to say, recently quoted 
by the Independent, and as true to-day as 
when it was written : 

"The war in which the present proposition 
might engage us, should that be its conse- 
quence, is not her war, but ours. Its object is 
to introduce and establish the American sys- 
tem of keeping out of our land all foreign pow- 



126 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

ers — of never permitting those of Europe to 
intermeddle with the affairs of our nations. 
It is to maintain our own principles, not to de- 
part from it. * * * With Great Britain with- 
drawn from their scale and shifted into that of 
our two continents, all Europe combined would 
not undertake such a war, for how would they 
propose to get at either enemy without su- 
perior fleet?" 

The result of this statement, enforced by 
practically identical advice from Madison, and 
co-operation of that far-sighted and rugged 
American, John Quincy Adams, was the state 
paper most vital in the life of our country. 
This was the message sent by the President to 
Congress, Dec. 2, 1823. It embraces the set of 
principles known as the Monroe Doctrine. 
They constitute the basis of a major part of 
our national policy and diplomacy. This mes- 
sage says : 

"The occasion has been judged proper for 
asserting as a principle in which the rights and 
interests of the United States are involved. 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 127 

that the American continents, by the free and 
independent condition which they have as- 
sumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be 
considered as subject for future colonization 
by any European power. * * * We owe 
it, therefore, to candour, and to the amicable 
relations existing between the United States 
and those powers, to declare that we should 
consider any attempt on their part to extend 
their system to any portion of this hemisphere 
as dangerous to our peace and safety. * * * " 

This was a world challenge of supreme im- 
pertinence and great daring. Not only can't 
you have any land, but we won't stand a min- 
ute for the holy system cultivated with so much 
care by the Alliance. In other words, one 
half of the world is free. 

I am aware that nothing could seem more 
trite and banal than reading a moral on as an- 
cient a matter as the Monroe Doctrine. Still 
nothing is more certain than that its true sig- 
nificance, as well as its origin and its mainte- 
nance, is unknown to the American public to- 



128 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

day. And to a great body of our chosen rep- 
resentatives in Congress assembled these things 
are as strange as the Koran. 

If the foregoing plain statement of the dip- 
lomatic correspondence, the opinion of the pro- 
mulgators, and the immediate historical causes 
of Monroe's famous message have any mean- 
ing whatever, it is this: That practically the 
whole world intended to attack this continent ; 
that for lack of a navy we could not possibly 
have prevented it; that a common ideal and 
sense of justice led the English to bring their 
peerless fleet to our defence. And subsequent 
history shows that they have ever since kept 
that fleet at our disposal for this same purpose. 
And it is now quite plain to even the sceptical 
Solon that, although they have lacked naval 
force for major hostilities in America, the 
forces of despotism, thwarted by Canning and 
Monroe, have ever since been gaining instead 
of losing the will and power to strike. 

The final and arch enemy of these forces is 
the United States. We are the cradle and cas- 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 129 

tie of all those liberal ideas which eat into their 
pretensions, and which this country and Eng- 
land alone championed in 1823. 

"It was impossible for the continental Eu- 
ropean powers to think of oversea military 
action in the face of the British and American 
fleets. Such hopes were sunk in the waters of 
Trafalgar beyond the possibility of resurrec- 
tion." 



CHAPTER NINE 

PUBLICITY vs. DUPLICITY. THE 
INTRIGUES OF AN EMPEROR 

A Mysterious Stranger Appears at the Paris Con- 
sulate with Proof of an Imperial Plot — The Iron- 
clad Rams of Napoleon III — The Death Knell of 
the Fleet and the Threatened Bombardment of New 
York — The Intrigues of an Emperor — The Fallacy 
of Neutrality — The Diplomatic IVIethods of John 
Bigelow — ^A Cunning Ruse — The Planted Dispatch 
— The Collapse of the Conspiracy. 

IT was during the Civil War. John 
Bigelow, consul-general of the United 
States, was transacting business in the 
consulate in Paris, France. It was Sept. 10, 
1863. Entered David Fuller, messenger. 
He presented the card of a stranger. The 
stranger demanded an immediate audience, 
and that it be personal and private. Years 
afterward the distinguished journalist and 

130 



DRAMATIC MOMENTS 131 

diplomat described this interesting interview 
as follows : 

"Permission granted, a man of middle age 
presently entered, and after closing the door 
carefully behind him proceeded to say that he 
had a communication to make of considerable 
importance to my government. He was a 
Frenchman of the Gascon type, small of sta- 
ture, with glittering black eyes, and thick, 
coarse, jet-black hair, which had appropriated 
to itself most of his forehead ; he was sober and 
deliberate of speech, as if he had been trained to 
measure his words and was accustomed to be 
held responsible for what he said. I was not 
prepossessed by his appearance, perhaps be- 
cause of my rather extensive experience of 
people continually presenting themselves at 
the consulate in quest of a market for their 
suspicions, rumours, and imaginings, and who 
usually introduced themselves, like the person 
before me, as bearers of information of vital 
importance. 

"I asked him to be seated, and waited for 



132 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

him to proceed. He asked if I was aware that 
the Confederates were building war vessels in 
France. * * * He proceeded to state as facts 
within his own knowledge that there were then 
building in the ports of Bordeaux and Nantes, 
for account of the Confederate States of 
America, several vessels, some of which were 
armour plated and with rams, which altogether 
were to cost from twelve to fifteen millions of 
francs; that the engines for some of them 
were built and ready to put in, and that for the 
armament of these vessels artillery and shells 
had also been ordered. I here remarked that 
no vessel of war could be built in France with- 
out the authorization of the French Govern- 
ment. He replied that the official authoriza- 
tion for the construction, equipment, and arm- 
ing of these vessels had already been issued 
from the Department of the Marine. I asked 
him if he meant seriously to affirm that the ves- 
sels he spoke of were building under an official 
authorization of the Government. He reaf- 
firmed his statement, and added further that he 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 133 

was prepared to prove it to my entire satisfac- 
tion. 

"I tried not to betray my sense of the su- 
preme importance of this communication, which 
was too circumstantial and precise to be wholly 
imaginary, if possibly exaggerated. * * * 

''I said to my visitor: 'Of course what you 
state is of grave importance to my govern- 
ment if it can be substantiated, but of none at 
all without proofs which cannot be disputed or 
explained away.' 

" *0f course not,' he replied. 

" 'What kind of proofs can you furnish?' I 
asked. 

" 'Original documents,' he said, 'and what is 
more, I will engage that with my proofs in 
hand, you can effectually secure the arrest of 
the ships. * * *' 

"He thereupon produced a certified copy of 
the government authorization and some half 
dozen original letters and papers, showing, be- 
yond a doubt, the substantial truth of his state- 
ments. * * * He said that of course the papers 



184 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

were not obtainable without some expense and 
much trouble, and that when the documents he 
proposed to furnish me had actually defeated 
the naval operations of the Confederates in 
France, he would expect 20,000 francs. * * * 

*'At the hours agreed upon on Saturday, the 
12th, Mr. X reappeared with his supplemen- 
tary proofs. These, with those already in my 
possession, were conclusive ; nothing could have 
been more conclusive." 

The documents were letters from Arman, a 
great shipbuilder at Bordeaux, a member of 
the Legislature and a powerful partizan of the 
throne and imperialistic party in France. 
One was to M. Voruz, an ironfounder of 
Nantes, acknowledging receipt of moneys on 
account of "two ships which I am building for 
account of the Confederates." Another was 
to the Compte P. de Chasseloup-Laubat, 
Minister of the Marine in the Imperial Cabinet 
asking authority to arm four ships of war 
building in Bordeaux and Nantes. This let- 
ter naively stated that "Their special arma- 



IN AMEMCAlSr DIPLOMACY 135 

ment contemplates their eventual sale to the 
governments of China and Japan." The most 
alarming of the lot was the official authoriza- 
tion signed by the Minister of Marine himself. 

This information was staggering. In our 
security of to-day it is impossible to conceive 
of the import of the situation, and the respon- 
sibility thus thrown in a few words upon the 
shoulders of the consul. It seemed possible 
that the fate of a nation was in his hands. It 
would have been scarcely more urgent if he had 
discovered a practical and imminent plot to 
blow up half of Grant's army in the moment 
of attack. 

A revolution had just taken place in the art 
of building ships of war. The discovery of 
the ironclad ram had rendered the navy of the 
United States as obsolete as the triremes of 
Greece. These two monsters nearing com- 
pletion in the ways at Bordeaux were more 
than a match for all the squadrons of Far- 
ragut. They were expected with justifiable 
confidence to blast the Stars and Stripes from 



186 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

the sea, to lift the blockade of the Southern 
ports, and to bombard the Bowery into sub- 
mission and tribute. 

In them lay new heart and life for the starv- 
ing Confederacy. They meant guns and 
ammunition for Longstreet's deadly riflemen. 
They meant murderous food for Pendle- 
ton's batteries, shoes and blankets for a desti- 
tute soldiery, and three-course dinners for a 
gaunt population. Far worse than this: for 
they carried with them the panic of dangers 
strange and unfamiliar. Their successful op- 
eration would give the eager Emperor of 
France the encouragement and opportunity he 
was panting for — to recognize, if not join, the 
Confederacy. 

Verily, circumstances alter cases. In 1776 
a rebellious army in the United States had 
sought and obtained comfort and support from 
a Bourbon prince, in defiance of all rules of 
neutrality. And John Paul Jones in French 
ports had acquired the swift hulls and salt- 
petre which struck such a blow at the pride of 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 137 

the Mistress of the Seas. This is extolled in 
story and song. But all authority is unani- 
mous in horror and indignation at the depreda- 
tions of that pirate ship, the Alabama, which 
swept our own flag from the ocean ; it execrates 
the memory of the Napoleonic despot who 
harboured the *'spy" Sliddel, and plotted the 
independence of Richmond under a neutral 
cloak. 

Although there remains no sane American 
who does not devoutly thank heaven for the 
success of the Union and the end of the with- 
ering system of slavery, there are many to 
whom it is not at all self evident that a sym- 
pathy and agreement with the cause of Robert 
E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in 1862 is con- 
clusive proof of total depravity. So in writ- 
ing this chronicle of the masterful manoeuvre 
by which a champion of the Federal cause con- 
tributed so much to the saving of the Union 
and discouraging its secret enemies abroad, 
there will be no pretence of thereby attempting 
to brand or catalogue the friends and enemies 



138 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

of America. At that time there were two 
Americas. And it was not so very obvious to 
the uninformed spectator in London and Paris 
which was the oppressed and which the op- 
pressor. 

No such doubt exists concerning the Em- 
peror of France. Napoleon III exhibited all 
the traits that had made the very name of em- 
peror a just cause of suspicion in the Republic, 
and has now finally goaded a patient world into 
a war of final riddance. At the outset it is 
only fair to say that the people of France had 
no voice in, part or sympathy with, the im- 
perialistic schemes of conquest and diplomatic 
duplicity that characterized the actions of their 
ruler. 

The moment the struggle broke out on the 
Potomac he saw his chance to put in practice 
the one infallible principle of princes — to 
conquer somebody. 

Under the familiar guise of collecting just 
debts he invited a number of powers to make a 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 139 

joint expedition to Mexico. When he got 
firmly established there, he threw off the mask 
and proposed to stay. He put a satellite po- 
tentate of Austrian persuasion on the new 
throne. His partners in the enterprise, being 
honest in their purposes, withdrew. But there 
he remained. The army of Northern Virginia 
and Jubal Early's cavalry rendered impossible 
the defence of the Monroe Doctrine by Wash- 
ington. 

In their dire extremity the Confederates 
promised Mexico to Napoleon if they were suc- 
cessful. This, together with the natural de- 
sire of a would-be absolute monarch to destroy 
the power of the foremost democracy in the 
world, readily persuaded him to champion the 
Southern cause in Europe. Together with the 
rest of the world he had issued his declaration 
of neutrality in the beginning of the struggle. 

One of two things was necessary before he 
dared to commit himself to open war with the 
United States. One was the assistance of 



140 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

Great Britain. The other was a Confederate ^ 
victory giving him at least a favourable pre- 
diction of a final victory. 

His urgent and repeated attempts to per- 
suade the English to interfere, or at least 
recognize the Government of Richmond, had 
failed. They had failed in spite of the nobility, 
Mr. Gladstone, and the Prime IMinister, whose 
natural sympathies were with the Southern half 
of the country and the courtly genius which had 
hitherto predominated in American affairs; 
and also in spite of the high protective tariff 
just passed by the Union, causing great loss to 
British industry. 

He had failed because England was ruled by 
its people. These people had an inherent re- 
pugnance to the institution of slavery which no 
cabinet dared face; and strange to relate, the 
Queen of England would not hear of it. 
Queen Victoria probably had as broad a vision 
and as- deep an understanding of the future of 
the Anglo-Saxon strain as any person then 



IN AMERICAlSr DIPLOMACY 141 

living. At all events, she is reported to have 
flatly stated to her minister : 

"My Lord, you must understand that I shall 
sign no paper which means war with the United 
States." 

Consequently our anxious diplomats in their 
outposts of the drama at Paris believed that the 
crisis had been averted, when the sudden entry 
of this Gascon informer from the offices of the 
ship -builder Arman disclosed a plot of the first 
magnitude hatching under their noses. 

One thing was certain. The American con- 
sul had to stop these ships from sailing, no mat- 
ter who was behind them, and no matter how 
he did it. Little things like this, hardly known 
by the public and ignored by those who see in 
a diplomat only a favoured plum-gatherer with 
a tinsel hat and a fancy tea room, are fre- 
quently put up to our representatives abroad. 

If this revelation exposed merely a Con- 
federate plot, and a shipyard working under 
cover of the false pretences that its vessels were 



142 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

for the Pacific trade, the problem was easy. 
With proofs now in his hands Bigelow could 
convince the authorities of the real designs of 
the enterprise, and they would be stopped at 
once. For this sort of thing was the gravest 
breach not only of the accepted laws governing 
neutrality, but of the repeated assurances and 
promises of the Emperor himself. A glance at 
his exhibits convinced the consul that Napoleon 
"was hovering over us — like the buzzards — in 
Gerome's famous picture, over the exhausted 
camel in the desert — only deferring his descent 
until we should be too feeble to defend our- 
selves." In other words Napoleon III was 
himself a party to the construction of these 
leviathans destined to destroy a friendly 
country. 

The first move was conventional. Com- 
plete copies of the papers were placed in the 
hands of M. Drouyn de Lhuys, the French 
Minister of Foreign Affairs. These were ac- 
companied by remonstrances, and insistent de- 
mands that the vessels be seized. The worthv 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 143 

minister, who was not in his master's confi- 
dence, was shocked and astonished. He prom- 
ised to take up the matter at once with the 
Minister of Marine. And after so long a time 
the Minister of Marine, w^ho seemed to con- 
sider it altogether incredible that these ships 
should have anything to do with the Confed- 
eracy, promised to take it up with His ]\Iaj- 
esty. His Majesty was away on a fishing 
trip. Furious notes and thinly disguised 
threats heated the mails from Washington. 
The accepted channels of diplomacy were 
clogged with the debris of negotiations. 

But meanwhile day and night the work on 
the ironclads proceeded furiously. It became 
evident that the crafty Emperor was going to 
win in the slow race and manage to be con- 
vinced just about fifteen minutes after the 
rams had safely cleared the harbour. 

No hero was on hand so desperate and cap- 
able as to blow them up single-handed. And 
there were no boats afloat in America that 
could keep these di^agons of the deep in har- 



144. DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

bour once they were ready to sail. There re- 
mained but one power to restrain them. The 
sense of justice. Not the Emperor's, for he 
had none. Not that of his ministers, for he 
controlled them. But the sense of justice of 
the people of France. 

When a consul starts to go behind the gov- 
ernment to which he is accredited and appeals 
in the name of a foreign power to the citizens 
of a country, he takes his reputation in his 
hands, and starts upon the forbidden paths 
that usually lead to disgrace and recall. As a 
matter of fact, it can only be done under two 
circumstances. One is under cover, where the 
envoy supplies the ammunition and a native 
does the talking — as when Bunau-Varilla en- 
gineered the defeat of the Nicaraguan route 
in the canal debate in Congress — or when the 
people are to be told something they wish to 
hear, and agree with in advance. Otherwise 
the fate of Dumba and citizen Genet lies in 
wait. 

Bigelow used both methods. If there exists 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 145 

one characteristic distinctly and pre-eminently 
French it is the honour of country, what might 
be called a national chivalry. The glory and 
the good name of their native land is an exalted 
mania with all Frenchmen. Let them know 
the facts, and not even the Emperor would dare 
further to countenance actions that would re- 
flect upon the good name of France. This 
was Bigelow's opinion. And as a last chance 
it was to this end that he turned all his en- 
ergy. 

He went to the leader of the French bar — a 
man grown old in the service of his country, 
the soul of integrity, whose probity as well as 
consummate legal acumen had placed him in 
the foremost rank of his times. He was also 
a member of the Corps Legislatif, a powerful 
factor in the opposition. The case was put 
frankly before him. 

Whatever his opinions with regard to the 
American struggle, the Frenchman was in- 
dignant and astonished that France should be 
made to play this underhand role. He agreed 



146 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

to write a powerful denunciation of it to be 
signed by himself. This was placed in Bige- 
low's hands to be given to the press. But here 
a second obstacle was presented. An editor of 
liberal notions and national enthusiasm was 
readily found who gladly promised to print it. 
But in monarchies all grist that goes to the 
mill is not ground. The Minister of Interior 
got wind of the affair, and dispatched a per- 
emptory order that the article be suppressed. 

Publicity, not its form of presentation, was 
the gist of this silent battle. And it is well 
known that some things can be made more 
startling by concealment than by display. 
Bigelow did not hesitate to start the report 
which soon spread over Paris that an opinion of 
international moment, written by the great au- 
thority Antoine Pierre Berryer, had been sup- 
pressed. 

The eager and pressing curiosity and grow- 
ing comment carried the first rampart. Ar- 
man was ordered to cover his tracks by a sale 
of the vessels to Sweden, for account of Den- 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 147 

mark — with the assurance that only one would 
be delivered to the Danes. The other, once out 
of harbour, and the Americans lulled, would 
be transferred to the original destination. 

So great was the popular support gathering 
behind this rumour that, some weeks before 
the ships were ready, M. Guerault, Editor of 
the Opinion Nationale determined to throw 
down the gage to the royal power and pub- 
lished a ringing article, *'Les Corsair es du 
Sud" in which the government was openly 
charged with a conspiracy with Arman "against 
the very existence of a friendly power." 

These, the weapons of information and 
truth, are not so dramatic or so entertaining as 
the intricate intrigues of Metternich and the 
bold and bloody paths of daggers and lies by 
which Hichelieu gained his ends. But to-day 
the world is beginning to realize that they are 
by far the most powerful of all diplomatic 
weapons. In this case they insured the hasty 
retreat of the regal master from his equivocal 
position. They lined up the forces of public 



148 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

opinion across the mouth of the harbour of 
Bordeaux. 

But they could not change the heart or real 
purpose of the Emperor any more than they 
now change those of the Hohenzollern. These 
men must be fought as one fights fire, with 
their own weapons. If blood and iron be the 
weapons they choose, very well, let it be blood 
and iron. If it be deception, very well, cheat 
the cheat. So concluding, Bigelow put on the 
finishing touch. He brought the Emperor to 
his own way of thinking by methods undoubt- 
edly to the Emperor's fancy — had he recog- 
nized them. 

He sat down and wrote a fairy story to the 
American consul at Marseilles. He told him 
in confidence how speculators in the United 
States were building some dreadful warships, 
very like the Alabama — indeed, nicely calcu- 
lated to ruin the commerce of any nation in 
manner even worse than this scourge of the 
sea. And that they were to sail into the gulf 
of Mexico as privateers imder letters of 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 149 

marque from Benito Juarez, the Mexican 
president, whom Napoleon had recently 
hounded into the mountains. And that un- 
doubtedly they would be ruinous to French 
commerce and schemes in those latitudes. 

This, all in a letter, in the nature of confiden- 
tial information, he dispatched by courier. He 
took very good care that it never reached its 
destination. The consul at Marseilles was not 
the person he wished to delude. Providen- 
tially it was stolen on the road and found its 
way at once into a newspaper. 

The happy conclusion is soon told. John- 
son, the historian says : 

"In all this there was no truth whatever, but 
the Emperor supposed it all to be true, and he 
made haste to stop the saihng of the Confed- 
erate ships, and to assure Bigelow of his friend- 
ship for the United States." 



CHAPTER TEN 

THE "TRENT" AFFAIR 

Righting An Old Wrong — Introducing an Ultima- 
tum, Including the Story of a Hold-Up at Sea — Two 
Ambassadors Captured and Imprisoned in Fort War- 
ren, Boston — A Lesson in International Law Proves 
an Example of International Joke — A National 
Celebration — A National Indignation — A National 
Retraction. Abraham Lincoln's Way — Anecdotes 
vs. the Rattling Sabre — A Conference of State — 
Salmon P. Chase States a Principle. 

I AM now about to exhibit an example of 
that interesting document, an ultimatum. 
It is the only thoroughly business-like ulti- 
matum we ever received. I have to confess 
that to the uninitiated it will prove a great dis- 
appointment. That is, if they expect as I did, 
to find an ultimatum bristling with threats and 
fascinating thunder-bolts of defiance, in Hec- 
tor's vein. It was presented with great polite- 
ness, as if it had been a bunch of jonquils, by 

150 



DRAMATIC MOMENTS 151 

Lord Lyon, British Ambassador in Washing- 
ton, to William H. Seward, Secretary of 
State, in the cabinet of Abraham Lincoln. It 
read more or less like a story book, and was 
embodied in instructions the ambassador re- 
ceived from home, which he was to give the 

Secretary. This is the way it went: 

I 

Foreign Office, Nov. 30, 1861. 
My Lord: 

"Intelligence of a very grave nature has 
reached Her Majesty's Government. 

*'This intelligence was conveyed officially to 
the knowledge of the admiralty by Commander 
Williams, agent for mails on board the con- 
tract steamer Trent, 

"It appeared from the letter of Commander 
Williams, dated 'Royal Mail Contract Packet 
Trent, at sea, November, 9,' that the Trent left 
Havana on the 7th instant, with Her Majesty's 
mails for England, having on board numerous 
passengers. Commander Williams states that 
shortly after noon, on the 8th, a steamer having 
the appearance of a man of war, but not show- 



152 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

ing colours, was observed ahead. On nearing 
her, at 1:15 P. M., she fired a round shot from 
her pivot-gun across the bows of the Trent and 
showed American colours. While the Trent 
was approaching her slowly, the American ves- 
sel discharged a shell across the bows of the 
Trent exploding half a cable's length ahead of 
her. The Trent then stopped, and an officer 
with a large armed guard of marines boarded 
her. The officer demanded a list of pas- 
sengers, and, compliance with this demand be- 
ing refused, the officer said he had orders 
to arrest Messrs. Mason, Slidell, McFarland, 
and Eustis, and that he had sure information 
of their being passengers in the Trent, While 
some parley was going on upon this matter, 
Mr. Slidell stepped forward and told the 
American officer that the four persons he had 
named were then standing before him. The 
commander of the Trent and Commander Wil- 
liams protested against the act of taking by 
force out of the Trent these four passengers, 
then imder the protection of the British flag. 



IN AMERICAlSr DIPLOMACY 153 

Eut the San Jacinto was at that time only two 
hundred yards from the Trent, her ship's com- 
pany at quarters, her ports open and tompions 
out. Resistance was therefore out of the ques- 
tion and the four gentlemen before named 
were forcibly taken out of the ship. A further 
demand was made that the commander of the 
Trent should proceed on board the San Jacinto, 
but he said he would not go unless forcibly com- 
pelled likewise, and this demand was not in- 
sisted upon. 

"It thus appears that certain individuals 
have been forcibly taken from on board a Brit- 
ish vessel, the ship of a neutral power, while 
such vessel was pursuing a lawful and innocent 
voyage — an act of violence which was an af- 
front to the British flag and a violation of in- 
ternational law. 

"Her Majesty's Government, bearing in 
mind the friendly relations which have long 
existed between Great Britain and the United 
States, are willing to believe that the United 
States naval officer who committed the aggres- 



154 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

sion was not acting in compliance with any au- 
thority from his government, or that if he con- 
ceived himself to be so authorized he greatly 
misunderstood the instructions he had received. 
For the government of the United States must 
be fully aware that the British Government 
could not allow such an affront to the national 
honour to pass without full reparation, and 
Her Majesty's government is unwilling to be- 
heve that it could be the deliberate intention of 
the government of the United States unneces- 
sarily to force into discussion between the two 
governments a question of so grave a character, 
and with regard to which the whole British 
nation would be sure to entertain such unanim- 
ity of feeling. 

*'Her Majesty's Government, therefore, 
trusts that when this matter shall have been 
brought under the consideration of the govern- 
ment of the United States, that government 
will, of its own accord, offer to the British Gov- 
ernment such redress as alone could satisfy the 
British nation, namely, the liberation of the 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 155 

four gentlemen and their delivery to your 
Lordship, in order that they may again be 
placed under British protection, and a suitable 
apology for the aggression which has been com- 
mitted. 

''Should these terms not be offered by Mr. 
Seward, you will propose them to him. 

"You are at liberty to read this dispatch to 
the Secretary of State, and, if he shall desire 
it, you will give him a copy of it. 

"I am, etc., "Russell." 

With this went the fuse to set the charge. 

"Should Mr. Seward ask for delay in order 
that this grave and painful matter should be 
deliberately considered, you will consent to a 
delay not exceeding seven days. If at the end 
of that time, no answer is given, or if any other 
answer is given except that of a compliance 
with the demands of Her Majesty's Govern- 
ment, your Lordship is instructed to leave 
Washington with all the members of your lega- 
tion and repair immediately to London." 



156 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

This document was a poser, and gave the 
Secretary of State about as hvely and as ex- 
acting a seven days as he ever had. Diplom- 
acy became an active and important function 
in the City of Washington. 

In so far as this country or any other is gov- 
erned in its quarrels and conflicts by interna- 
tional law the problem was a very easy one. 
The joke was on Great Britain. It was simply 
splendid. For here was Lord Palmerston in 
the most concise and unequivocal manner stak- 
ing everythmg he had and the seven seas upon 
the proposition that to stop a neutral boat and 
take off a passenger was an outrage and a 
scandal. Now that was just exactly what this 
country had contended for a century more or 
less, and it was this very kind of action that 
had called forth the resentment of the Frigate 
Constitution in the days of 1812. Provided 
my Lord's facts, so clearly put, were true, and 
provided we wished to follow the law in all its 
holy inviolability, all we had to do was politely 
acquiesce, and congratulate the Queen upon 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 157 

having finally arrived at a proper conception 
of the rules of the sea. 

The facts were true — ^to a letter. And the 
law as I stated. It was as clear as noonday, 
as contended for in America, that nobody but 
soldiers of a belligerent power could be re- 
moved from under a neutral flag. Maybe, 
then, you will conclude that was all there was 
about it. That was not even the beginning. 
For my Lord overlooked a few trifling facts. 
He was quite right in doing so. They were 
what the lawyers call irrelevant to the interna- 
tional issue, and he was not writing a romance. 
But in human afl*airs, American as well as 
others, the law has less to do with conduct than 
the lawyers or the professors would have us 
believe. And irrelevant testimony is quite 
often that which controls not only the jury, but 
the judge. 

Mr. Seward's problem was intensified by 
the identity of these same four passengers. 
Mr. James Murray Mason was a gentleman of 
credit and renown. He had shortly before 



158 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

been chairman of the Committee on Foreign 
Affairs in the United States Senate, and was 
the descendant of a long line of famous states- 
men in Virginia since before the Revolution. 
Mr. Slidell had also recently been a senator, 
and was known to be a gentleman of great 
polish and address, forensic skill and diploma- 
tic acumen. These two masters of the arts of 
the politician, if not of the statesmen, were 
versed to the minute in the affairs of the world 
and the accepted methods of procedure, and 
would make a very telling team sent out from 
some country on a deep diplomatic errand. 
So Jefferson Davis, President of the Confed- 
erate States believed, and William H. Seward 
agreed with him. 

When the news reached New York and Bos- 
ton that these two depraved and dangerous 
"traitors" representing a wicked rebellion had 
actually left Charleston on the Nashville as 
"ambassadors" bent upon making alliance for 
their government with Great Britain and 
France, and to get warships and cannon and 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 159 

heaven knows what instruments of the devil, 
the people were furious. When they learned 
that the Nashville was only a blind, and that 
the perfidious wretches had sneaked by the 
blockade in the Theodora, while the fleet chased 
the other boat, they were drunk with indigna- 
tion. It seemed as if they could part with their 
inlieritance if only they could get hold of these 
arch rebels. 

Meanwhile, another style of man came into 
the game. Captain Charles Wilkes, in com- 
mand of the first-class screw sloop San Jacinto, 
of fifteen guns, was animated by no motives 
whatever. Through a long career he had up- 
held the highest traditions of the United States 
Navy. Action was his long suit. The case 
was still to be recorded where the American 
Navy has not struck on the spot if it had half 
an excuse. Well, he came cruising into Ha- 
vana from the west coast of Africa about this 
time, on his way home from hunting slave trad- 
ers. At Havana, his second officer ran into 
his old acquaintance. Mason, in the Hotel 



160 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

Cubana. And every bell boy was full of the 
entertaining story of how the Confederates 
had fooled the Yankees, and were now about 
to sail under the certain protection of the Eng- 
lish flag. No secret was made of it. Every- 
body was to see them off on the Trent bound 
for Bermuda. 

Captain Wilkes made up his mind. Lieu- 
tenant Fairfax suggested some doubts. 
Doubts constituted no argument against a life- 
time of decision. When the British packet 
sailed into the Bahama Channel she found Cap- 
tain Wilkes waiting for her, and her distin- 
guished guests were provided with other quar- 
ters in short order, flag or no flag. 

When this news reached Broadway, Back 
Bay and points north and west, there was 
the greatest demonstration ever seen. The 
hated prisoners were led to a secure resting 
place, while bells rang, and orators spoke, and 
the Captain was wined and dined and thanked 
by Congress and forty Chambers of Commerce. 
The Revere House in Boston was the scene 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 161 

of a tremendous welcome, and the papers burst 
forth into pseans of thanksgiving. The mirac- 
ulous had happened. The arch rebels were 
caught. The right had been vindicated and 
everybody was happy. 

Not only that, but the national legislature in 
all-but-unanimous vote declared the capture 
a splendid achievement. In the heat of a civil 
war the great legal lights of the country, men 
like William Evarts and Senator Hale, main- 
tained with vehemence that it was not only 
justifiable but that any other course would 
have been degrading. And every editorial 
writer with hardly an exception swore that he 
would die in abject poverty fighting all Europe 
before he would give up the scoundrels. 

To this solid body of popular opinion and 
enthusiasm were added the cold, calculating 
and deliberately treasonable propaganda and 
efforts of Vallandigham in the House of Rep- 
resentatives, who worked on the public passion 
with all his might, in the hope of bringing on 
war, and so helping the Confederates. Very 



162 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

much as certain of his kind are now working 
to damage the United States in war from that 
same body. 

The demand of Lord Lyon and the ancient 
American doctrine on the one hand, and the 
people flushed with triumph, a new hero and 
the human booty on the other — this was the 
problem of seven days for Seward. 

The records of the time, including the public 
press, the thunder of Congress, the innumera- 
ble speeches before assemblies, and the diaries 
and biographies of the many historic figures 
on the stage reveal only one man quite calm 
and placid through it all. He sat in the White 
House, and outraged decency by relating an- 
ecdotes which he considered apropos of the 
situation. When told in tragic tones that 
there would surely be war between England 
and the United States his reply was a parable: 

"My father had a neighbour from whom he 
was separated by a fence. On each side of 
that fence there were two savage dogs, who 
kept running backward and forward along the 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 163 

barrier all day, barking and snapping at each 
other. One day they came to a large opening 
recently made in the fence. Perhaps you 
think they took advantage of this to devour 
each other. Not at all; scarcely had they seen 
the gap, when they both ran back, each with his 
tail between his legs." 

The cabinet met to discuss the affair on 
Christmas day, five days after Lord Lyon had 
made his demand. This left two days to go, 
with the British guns before and the warlike 
mob behind. And, not an unusual occurrence, 
the President was the only man present who 
had expressed no violent sentiments, and so 
had none to withdraw. 

As a matter of fact, in spite of the hot blood 
and the natural resentment, there was never 
really any doubt of the outcome of this meet- 
ing. It has been assumed by rampant parti- 
sans of the Union disguised as historians that 
Seward finally yielded in this matter with 
creditable bad grace in the face of a dire nec- 
essity, chargeable to the tyrannical government 



164. DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

of perfidious Albion. This explanation is not 
borne out either by the known character of the 
Americans, who have never been known to re- 
fuse a fight because the odds were against them, 
nor by the accounts of the cabinet meeting 
which are extaiit. Stripped of the high feel- 
ings of the moment, the temper of the people 
and the political dangers at home attendant 
upon a yielding decision, the case was plain 
enough. And it appears that from the first 
Abraham Lincoln had perceived this. And it 
is not the least of the many great decisions to 
his credit. He decided to yield because the 
English were right. Not because they were 
strong. And because the United States was 
wrong, and not because she was weak. 

The prevailing view in the cabinet after the 
discussion was expressed by Secretary Salmon 
P. Chase. He sacrificed his feelings to his 
sense of justice. Here is the way he expressed 
it: 

"It is gall and wormwood to me. Rather 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 165 

than consent to the liberation of these men I 
would sacrifice everything I possess. But 
I am consoled by the reflection that, while 
nothing but severest retribution is due to them, 
the surrender, under existing circumstances, is 
but simply doing right — simply proving faith- 
ful to our own ideas and traditions under 
strong temptation to violate them — simply giv- 
ing to England and the world the most signal 
proof that the American nation will not, under 
any circumstances, for the sake of inflicting 
jiist punishment on rebels, commit even a 
technical wrong against neutrals." 

This position was courageous and manly. 
And if Seward had seen the point he could 
probably have turned the occasion into the in- 
ternational joke of the century. Perhaps he 
did see it, but feared the political effect at home 
of a simple, straightforward admission of error. 
At all events, his answer was a book full of 
bad English precedents instead of good Amer- 
ican law, and long-winded arguments of a na- 



166 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

ture to assuage the feelings of his constituents. 
It contained just one sentence of any conse- 
quence : 

*'The four persons in question are now held 
in military custody, at Fort Warren, in the 
State of Massachusetts. They will he cheer- 
fully liberated. Your Lordship will please to 
indicate a time and place for receiving them." 

The incident was closed. The only perma- 
nent effect upon international relations was the 
inevitable end of the doctrine of "visit and 
search." The only flaw in the proceedings 
from the American point of view was our fail- 
ure to point this out with vigour and good hu- 
mour. 



CHAPTER ELEVEN 

COACHING CHINA 

The Everlasting Problem of the "Inferior Race." 
Conflict of "Manifest Destiny" and the "Square 
Deal." A Crisis in the Orient. The "Powers" Rig 
an Action Against the Celestial Kingdom, Backing 
the Advance of the Caucasian Drummer. Anson 
Burlingame, Back Bay Politician, Takes the Case of 
China. The Fate of a Continent in His Hands — An 
Ambassador to All the World. His Treaty with 
Seward. A Convention with Lord Clarendon. The 
Triumphant Diplomatic Conquest of Two Emperors 
and the Iron Chancellor. 

FROM Berlin to Bagdad, from Cairo to 
Cape Town, from Samarkand to Bom- 
bay, the whole planet has witnessed 
the assimilation, benevolent and otherwise, of 
every inferior, that is to say weaker people, 
under the sun, excepting only the monumental 
Chinese. 

Searching back among the intricate and de- 

167 



168 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

vious national jealousies and heroic figures of 
a century of diplomacy in the Orient for the 
cause of this phenomenon, we come upon a 
strange spectacle ; two Americans, one in com- 
mand of the Chinese Army, and the other, am- 
bassador from China to the entire world. One 
holding the long-haired rebels at bay in the 
mysterious recesses of the kingdom; the other 
keeping the Christian kings from "taking 
China by the throat." The understanding of 
the indignation mentioned above involves the 
record of the second of these old adventurers, 
the ambassador. But I cannot forbear to give 
a little contemporaneous picture of his com- 
panion piece, the barest recital of the incidents 
of whose career are sufficient to give him fore- 
most rank among the soldiers of fortune that 
have heralded the coming of the diplomat in 
every frontier known to the Anglo-Saxon. 

This was General Frederick T. Ward, or- 
ganizer of the first Chinese troops trained and 
disciplined under modern methods — known to 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 169 

history as the "Ever- victorious Army," after- 
ward in command of "Chinese" Gordon. The 
old account says: "He is instructing the Chi- 
nese in the use of European weapons, and has 
about two thousand of them trained, whom he 
has led in a most desperate manner, success- 
fully, in several recent battles. * * * He was 
born in Salem, Massachusetts, went to sea 
when a boy, became mate of a ship, and then 
was a Texas ranger, California gold miner, in- 
structor in the Mexican service, was with 
Walker — for which he was outlawed by his 
government — at the Crimea, and then joined 
the Chinese, among whom he has gradually 
risen to influence and j)ower. He is now their 
best officer. * * * " 

But what saved China was not an officer. 
Hannibal himself would have thrown up the 
job of defending this world of Chinese ac- 
customed to go to war with an armour-bearer 
before and a parasol valet behind. The most 
potent single factor in a long and complex 



170 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

drama, was their first and greatest diplomat — 
Anson Burlingame, late orator of Faneuil 
Hall, Boston, State of Massachusetts. 

A narrative of this unique envoy, sent from 
the Past to negotiate with the Future, is not 
out of place in the chronicle of American dip- 
lomatic exploits, for he was also minister from 
the United States to China, and the founder of 
the American policy of "Hands Off" and a 
square deal. He was one of the few men in 
history trusted to the extent of representing 
both sides of an international discussion at one 
and the same time — a particularly trying posi- 
tion, considering that neither side had the 
slightest idea what the other was talking about, 
and from their cradles were fundamentally in- 
capable of finding out. 

This Back Bay politician possessed precisely 
no diplomatic training whatever. His original 
appointment was in large measure due to the 
answer he gave to Preston Brooks, after the 
South Carolinian had beaten the Senator from 
Massachusetts with a cane in full view of the 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 171 

nation. This answer delighted the world. It 
suggested rifles at short range on Deer Island 
by Niagara Falls. His equipment was of a 
kind that a lifetime spent in the libraries of the 
world and all the courts in creation would never 
supply. It consisted mainly of three things, 
given him by his fathers: a sense of chivalry, 
that is, the sympathy and simple courage which 
champions the weak; hard practical common 
sense that neither the mysticism of the East 
nor the pompous and regal ceremony and ar- 
rogance of the West could befuddle or betray ; 
a personal charm of character and manners of 
whose failure in courtesy there is no record. 

He received his appointment as Minister to 
China in 1861, and set out across the world in 
much the same frame of mind as one might now 
start for Saturn. He was not trammeled with 
"arbitrary instructions" for the very good rea- 
son that Secretary Seward, man of imagination 
though he was, could not imagine what to in- 
struct him. At that time the prevailing diplo- 
matic procedure in the East was conducted by 



172 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

gunboats and the war then just started at Fort 
Sumter rendered it inadvisable for Seward to 
spare any such at the moment. 

So this Yankee landed in the ancient king- 
dom of the inscrutable Manchus from aboard a 
packet, as innocent of the feuds and imponder- 
abilities of Chinese politics as he was of the con- 
flicting and sordid ambitions of the Caucasian 
drummers already arrived to exploit them. 

He found what Gilbert calls a pretty howdy- 
do — a government as old and immovable as 
the desert, with not even the faintest germ 
of a desire for "progress." Locomotives, me- 
chanical toys, telegrams, thrashing machines, 
bath-tubs, and all modern improvements were 
to them eyesores and abominations. The 
worst of it was that as a plain matter of fact 
this government suited them exactly. It filled 
every want and withstood revolution and dis- 
order in a manner to create the wildest envy in 
every cabinet in Christendom. 

To becloud the picture one of these revolu- 
tions was then at high tide. This was being 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 173 

conducted by the Taipings, whose professions 
of Christianity did not prevent a consistent 
practice of massacre, loot, and pillage. In an- 
other quarter the country was being sacked in 
the name of Mohammed, while the professed 
bandits in a third tried in vain to keep up their 
reputation. 

A punitive expedition had shortly before es- 
tablished the European embassies in Pekin, 
intrenching another menace to the celestial 
kingdom ten times more formidable than all the 
Moslems and bandits in existence. These were 
the peaceful heralds of coming light — ^the 
merchants and traders of England and France. 
They camped in the "Treaty Ports" and were 
the self-appointed interpreters of China to a 
curious world, and the advisors to their most 
Christian majesties. 

Any man at all versed in the affairs of the 
East will bear testimony that the great mass of 
these traders, speculators and financial adven- 
turers — both those with simply selfish motives 
and reputable and honourable business men — 



174 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

have no more real knowledge or appreciation 
of the Chinese than has the total stranger. 
They know their trade and resources, but 
not one Chinese intimately, and the history, 
philosophy, deep convictions, and proud dig- 
nity of the Chinese, are matters of indiffer- 
ence to them. At that time those were con- 
sidered hardly more than an insult, interfer- 
ing as they did with the divine right of busi- 
ness, and the advance of profits. This ele- 
ment made the loudest claims upon diplomacy 
and created the world problem, not yet solved, 
which Anson Burlingame was called upon to 
meet. 

This European advance guard was undoubt- 
edly composed of men of a strong strain and 
daring dispositions, risking much in a new field 
to gain much. There was nothing wicked 
about them. They held a philosophy still 
prevalent in commercial circles — a philosophy 
which has goaded every foreign office for a 
hundred years, and only reached its logical con- 
clusion in the efficiency and f rightfulness on the 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 175 

fields of Flanders. The civilized world has the 
problem presented by it still to face. Roughly 
the point of view was this : 

A superior nation has the right, if not the 
duty, of compelling an inferior nation to adopt 
such ideas of government, justice, and customs 
as it may decree, and to open its territories to 
the use, and its resources to the benefit of 
the superior nation. Particularly the latter. 
The creed is that "manifest destiny" makes 
such physical and political domination inevi- 
table in the interests of civilization, and "prog- 
ress." Without exception, the demand is that 
this shall be accomplished in short order by 
force of arms, so that a heaven-sent "culture" 
may uplift the benighted area. In other 
words, the trader from a "civilized" state may 
proceed to a "heathen" state and sell his goods 
or conduct his enterprise in any way he sees 
fit, and has the right to demand military and 
diplomatic support for his decision. 

Perhaps such action is inevitable, like the 
tides, and beyond the control of men's minds. 



176 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

however enlightened. My purpose is to show 
that when confronted with this problem Anson 
Burlingame undertook to decide it; and, as far 
as the United States and China were con- 
cerned, he succeeded in the manner I shall now 
relate. 

From the day of his arrival he took the 
unique and bizarre attitude that the Chinese 
were real people, to be treated with courtesy 
and consideration. In spite of the fact that he 
was the representative of a foreign nation with 
"interests" to conserve or acquire he held the 
idea that the country belonged absolutely and 
entirely to the Chinese, and that it was their 
business as well as their privilege to conduct it. 
It took him about a week to discover the trav- 
esty in the Taiping's Christianity, and he en- 
couraged the training and dispatch of Ward's 
forces to put them down. Upon reaching 
Pekin he sought out the other ministers, and 
became shortly the leading spirit in a diplomat 
quartette called by Frederick Wells Williams 
the "Four B's"— Count Balluzech, the Rus- 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 177 

sian; M. Berthemy, the French Minister; Sir 
Frederick Bruce, and Anson Burlingame. 
Thrown together constantly in informal and 
intimate association, together they formulated 
that which was the forerunner of the famous 
"Open Door" policy of John Hay. As stated 
in his dispatch to Washington it was as follows : 

"The policy upon which we agreed is briefly 
this : that while we claim our treaty right to buy 
and sell and live in the treaty ports, subject in 
respect to rights of property and persons to 
the jurisdiction of our own governments, we 
will not ask for, nor take concessions of, terri- 
tory in the treaty ports or in any way interfere 
with the jurisdiction of the Chinese Govern- 
ment over its own people, or ever menace the 
territorial integrity of the Chinese Empire. 
That we will not take part in the internal strug- 
gles in China beyond what is necessary to main- 
tain our treaty rights. * * * 

"By the favoured-nation clause in the treat- 
ies, no nation can gain, by any sharp act of 
diplomacy, any privilege not secured to all. 



178 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

The circumstances conspire to make this a for- 
tunate moment in which to inaugurate the co- 
operative policy. * * * Our only hope is 
in forbearance and perfect union among our- 
selves ; if these are maintained, and our govern- 
ments sustain us in the policy we have adopted, 
I cannot but be hopeful of the future, and feel 
that a great step has been taken in the right 
direction in China." 

He pursued this understanding with his col- 
leagues with such good faith that the Chinese 
came to regard him as a real friend. The in- 
fluence of this representative who had not one 
bluejacket or doughboy behind him became a 
prime influence in the country. Shortly after 
his arrival the French consul at Ning-po began 
the nagging and the grabbing again. He 
wanted another concession. Concessions giv- 
ing European jurisdiction was the panacea uni- 
versally recommended by the traders and, of 
course, universally resisted by the Mandarins. 
Burlingame urged the Chinese to put up a 
stiff front and had a heart-to-heart talk with 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 179 

the French consul upon which the effort was 
abandoned. 

He successfully mediated in a dispute be- 
tween the Pekin Government and a British 
concern that arrived in China with a squadron 
of warships which it proposed the Chinese 
should take, English crews and all. The re- 
sult, again a triumph of fair play, was that the 
Lay-Osborne Flotilla sailed back to England. 

A more important consequence to the United 
States was the subsequent action obtained 
from the grateful Chinese forbidding the Con- 
federate raider Alabama even to approach 
the ports of the Empire. This was more 
of a concession than any of our famous am- 
bassadors could get from any country in Eu- 
rope. Not the least of his services to China 
was his influence in leading the Prince to solicit 
the services of the eminent American engineer, 
Raphael Pumpelly, to make the first examina- 
tion of their mineral resources. 

It was all very well for the ministers in 
Pekin to agree upon this mild procedure, but 



180 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

the tide of commerce and the demands of busi- 
ness were driving from the other direction. 
Firm in the belief that a "strong and vigorous 
policy," continual "pressure," and a coercion 
based upon the unanswerable arguments of 
naval batteries were the only methods to handle 
a "foreign, corrupt, semi-barbarous and usurp- 
ing government," they were rapidly driving 
that government to its wits' end. The expira- 
tion of some of their trade conventions threat- 
ened the distracted ministers with unknown 
disasters. For even if they were willing to ac- 
cept uplift and progress, the people were not. 
They would resist with all the fury begotten of 
an inherent reverence for and devotion to their 
ancient traditions, customs, and "supersti- 
tions." If the Dowager Empress decided to 
resist, she knew very well she would be over- 
whelmed. If she did not, her throne would not 
be worth a yen. The people would not stand 
by her. 

The prospect was that demands would be 
made for the exemption of foreign goods from 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 181 

inland and local taxes, the introduction of rail- 
roads and telegraph hnes, the privileges of 
opening mines, and the establishment of inter- 
national courts for collecting from debtor Chi- 
nese. This was a fearful prospect to the re- 
gents. What might come by time was one 
thing, but these demands at the mouth of a 
cannon amounted to ruination. 

Here we get some conception both of the 
Chinese character and of Burlingame. Only 
one way out occurred to them. It was almost 
as revolutionary and undignified as the tele- 
graph. That was to send an embassy to these 
heathen countries in Europe to see w^hat it was 
all about, if any one could find out, and to per- 
suade them to be reasonable, if perchance such 
a miracle was possible. 

They had made a kind of tentative experi- 
mental effort of this sort once before. They 
had not established embassies to be sure, but 
still had taken a very radical and doubtful 
step. They had actually sent Mr. Pin Chun 
on a scouting expedition to see what those 



182 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

countries were like. What Mr. Pin Chun re- 
ported is not obtainable, but it hardly covered 
the exigencies of the occasion as an English 
account of his visit may explain. It says : 

**He was received like the Queen of Sheba bj 
King Solomon and shown — at least in Great Britain 
— everything that was admirable from the West- 
em point of view. He was as far, however, 
from appreciating the triumphs of science as was 
Cetewajo the Zulu, whose admiration of England 
focussed itself on the elephant Jumbo at the Zoolog- 
ical Gardens." 

It is not my purpose to affect to patronize 
these people. A greater mistake could not be 
made. Keener, more capable, statesman than 
some of those consulted on this occasion could 
not be found from the time of Solomon to that 
of Jumbo. Li Hung Chang's report on the 
subject is on record, and, if they had seen it, 
would probably have caused the utmost aston- 
ishment to the self-satisfied critics of the "semi- 
barbarians." 

The consequence of the decision reached by 
Prince Kung and his advisors was radical and 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 183 

it was conclusive evidence of a penetrating 
judgment both of character and of events. 
They appointed Anson Burhngame ambassa- 
dor to all the Treaty Powers without excep- 
tion and returned him to Seward with even 
more extensive powers than those with which 
he came. The confidence placed in this 
Yankee's good will, ability, and understanding 
apparently had no limit. '*Go forth," they 
said; "we place the fate of China in your 
hands." 

Burlingame received this proposition in 
amazement, of course, but he accepted it at its 
face value. He wrote Seward : 

"I may be permitted to add that when the 
oldest nation in the world, containing one-third 
of the human race, seeks, for the first time, to 
come into relations with the West and requests 
the youngest nation, through its representa- 
tive, to act as the medium of such change, the 
mission is not one to be slighted or rejected." 

Having concluded that Burlingame under- 
stood their situation and could be trusted to 



184 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

present their case, the Chinese wasted no 
words on ceremony. There is an appealing 
dignity and brevity about their announcement 
of the mission. 

"The envoy Anson Burlingame manages af- 
fairs in a friendly and peaceful manner, and 
is fully acquainted with the general relations 
between this and other countries ; let him, there- 
fore, now be sent to all the Treaty Powers as 
the high minister, empowered to attend to 
every question arising between China and 
those countries. This from the Emperor." 

Resigning as minister from the United 
States and assuming the extraordinary role as 
Chinese ambassador to all creation, the Yankee 
set out to Tientsin in a cart. He was accom- 
panied on the expedition by a suite of thirty 
persons. Two of those were secretaries — J. 
McLeavy Brown, Chinese secretary of the 
British Legation, and M. Deschamps, a 
Frenchman in high esteem in Pekin. Two 
others were members of the Chinese 400, sent 
as official "learners" for to see and to admire. 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 185 

It soon became evident that the Empress had 
played a strong hand. Not only had she 
turned against the West one of its own most 
powerful orators, and one whose ringing de- 
mands for fair play in the King's English could 
not be avoided, but she had staged a blazing ad- 
vertisement of her kingdom and its proposi- 
tion. As a publicity campaign it eclipsed 
everything known to date, and made Barnum 
look like an amateur. 

To give the proper dramatic and Homeric 
touch to the picture the party was set upon by 
highwaymen on the way to the coast. The 
ubiquitous British gunboat having saved the 
situation, all hands and an exhibit of curiosities 
embarked for California and the great adven- 
ture. 

At sight of the Golden Gate and the familiar 
shores of home it is said that Burlingame's 
heart failed him. He reflected upon the shift- 
ing sands and the masquerade fury of Ameri- 
can politics, known of old, and began to dread 
the possible indignation and brick-bats of a con- 



186 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

stituency lashed from the stump to hector the 
"American Chinaman" and the "Pigtail here- 
tic." 

True enough, a howling mob jammed the 
docks, but not in anger. With pure delight 
they crowded to herald the big show. An ova- 
tion equal to the triumphant return of a victo- 
rious Csesar accompanied him across the con- 
tinent. His Oriental embassy was received in 
great state by President Johnson, and Burlin- 
game opened the big guns of the campaign. 

He drew a picture of a peaceful, ancient and 
honourable kingdom, of a civilization already 
grown old while the Vandals were still scouring 
Europe; to which were due the courtesy and 
consideration observed by all gentle people to 
the venerable, and in a thousand different keys 
reiterated the one great principle he had de- 
termined to establish — that the world should 
cease to bully and coerce the Ancient King- 
dom. 

The immediate political effect he was work- 
ing for was not new treaties. It was a moder- 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 187 

ate and reasonable interpretation of the old 
ones. The existing treaties had been gained 
by force and threats. It was obvious that they 
would be executed by the same methods, over 
the dead bodies of a milhon Chinese. True to 
his trust he was representing China but his 
statesmanlilve conception went much further 
than that. Even from the selfish point of view 
of "National Interest," the one maxim of di- 
plomacy of the era, the practice of encroaching 
upon China held a deadly peril. It insured 
ultimate friction and war between the bood- 
lers. The **Harpie Nations" would shortly 
and surely come to blows over the booty — end- 
ing in none could guess what wide conflagra- 
tion. 

Of course this argument and policy produced 
a storm of protest, ridicule, and fight from 
those depending upon guns to expand their 
business, and also from the "Imperialists" of 
all nations. Dreams of great "spheres of in- 
fluence" in the East filled the minds of con- 
tinental statesmen. 



188 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

The battle raged about Burlingame's pres- 
entation of the case at a banquet given him 
in New York, presided over by the Governor. 

"You have given a broad and generous wel- 
come," he said, "to a movement made in the 
interests of all mankind. * * * That 
East, which men have sought since the days of 
Alexander, now seeks the West. China, 
emerging from the mists of time, but yesterday 
suddenly entered your Western gates, and con- 
fronts you by its representatives here to-night. 
* * * She comes with the great doctrine 
of Confucius, uttered two thousand three hun- 
dred years ago : *Do not unto others what you 
would not have others do unto you.' Will you 
not respond, with the more positive doctrine of 
Christianity : 'We will do unto others what we 
would have others do unto us' ? * * * 

"She asks you to forget your ancient preju- 
dices, to abandon your assumption of superior- 
ity, and to submit your questions to her, as she 
proposes to submit hers to you — to the arbitra- 
ment of reason. She wishes no war : she asks 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 189 

you not to interfere in her internal af- 
fairs. * * * 

"She asks you that you will respect the 
neutrality of her waters and the integrity of 
her territory. She asks in a word, to be left 
perfectly free to unfold herself precisely in that 
form of civilization of which she is most capa- 
ble. 

"She asks you to give to those treaties which 
were made under the pressure of war a gener- 
ous and Christian construction. Because you 
have done this, because the Western nations 
have reversed their old doctrine of force, she 
responds, and, in proportion as you have ex- 
pressed your good will, she has come forth to 
meet you; and I aver that there is no spot on 
earth where there has been greater progress 
made in the past few years than in the Empire 
of China. * * * 

"Yet notwithstanding this manifest prog- 
ress, there are people who will tell you * * * 
that it is the duty of the Western Treaty 
Powers to combine for the purpose of coercing 



190 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

China into reforms which they may desire but 
>vhich she may not desire — ^who undertake to 
say that this people have no rights which you 
are bound to respect. In their coarse language 
they say: *Take her by the throat.' Using 
the tyrant's plea, they say they know better 
what China wants than China does her- 
self. * * * 

"Now it is against the malign spirit of this 
tyi'annical element that this Mission was sent 
forth to the Christian world. * * * 

"Missions and men may pass away, but the 
principles of eternal justice will stand. I de- 
sire that the autonomy of China may be pre- 
served. I desire that her independence may be 
secured. I desire that she may have equality, 
that she may dispense equal privileges to all 
nations. If the opposite school is to prevail, 
if you are to use coercion against that great 
people, then who are to exercise the coercion, 
whose forces are you to use, whose views are 
you to establish? You see the very attempt to 
carry out any such tyrannical policy would in- 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 191 

volve not only China, but would involve you 
in bloody wars with each other. * * * " 

I have given this speech at such length be- 
cause the argument is not done yet. It would 
take a bold man to make its counterpart in 
Tokio to-morrow, and changing the name 
China to divers other places it would meet with 
a howl in most countries of the world to-day, or 
would if every one were not busy with the 
grand and final tyranny of all. 

The result in the United States was imme- 
diate and lasting success. A new treaty was 
signed on the spot. It recognized China's 
right to "unmolested dominion over her own 
territories" including the "concessions" except 
as already modified by treaties. It gave the 
Emperor unlimited right to make such changes 
or improvements or decrees as he chose regard- 
ing the internal affairs of his kingdom without 
any foreign dictation. 

In those respects the principles of American 
policy have not changed from that day to this 
and as a result have placed us in the honour- 



192 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

able position of being the only nation which 
has never despoiled the poor old hermit, and 
perhaps of being her sole disinterested cham- 
pion in a world of wolves. For the rest the 
treaty went too far. It permitted unlimited 
immigration which later fell foul of our west- 
ern coast and the Labour Unions. 

Facing the screams of the Shanghai press 
this strange embassy proceeded in state to Lon- 
don. An Oriental more or less, or one or two 
brigades of ambassadors were no novelty in 
England and the populace seemed to proceed 
on their accustomed way in spite of the em- 
bassy. But the results obtained from the Gov- 
ernment were as far-reaching in their way as 
the American Treaty. The Queen gave an 
audience at Windsor, the stately castle later 
to give name and title to the ruling House of 
England. And Lord Clarendon, a liberal 
peer who had recently been given the portfolio 
of Foreign Affairs, took Burlingame into 
counsel. The consequence was a total reversal 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 193 

of the Palmerston policy, the "Firm Hand," 
and the acceptance of the ambassador's princi- 
ples of "Hands Off." Or, as the Imperialists 
put it, "the relapse of Great Britain into an 
effeminate, invertebrate, inconsequent policy, 
swayed by every wind from without and 
within, and opposed to the judgment of her 
own experienced representative." 

This policy was put in motion by a letter 
written by the minister to Burlingame, a copy 
of which was sent to the English officers in 
China with orders to act accordingly. The 
pith of the communication was this : 

"Her Majesty's Government, I informed 
you in reply, fully admitted that the Chinese 
Government was entitled to count upon the 
forbearance of foreign nations; and I assured 
you that, as far as this country was concerned, 
there was neither desire nor intention to ap- 
ply unfriendly pressure to China to induce her 
government to advance more rapidly in her in- 
tercourse with foreign nations than was con- 



194 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

sistent with safety and due and reasonable re- 
gard for the feelings of her subjects." 

One other thing about this note is worth 
equal notice. No matter how benign and 
charitable an English secretary may become, 
none has ever been known to desert an English- 
man. Let us hope none ever will. In another 
passage he made this plain: 

"But her Majesty's Government is, more- 
over, entitled to expect from China as an indis- 
pensable condition of her good will, the fullest 
amount of protection to British subjects re- 
sorting to her dominions." 

A howl whose echoes still sound in the China 
Sea went up when this order arrived. All 
the old traditions were thrown overboard. 
Everybody would be bankrupt. Business was 
ruined for ever. The world was delivered to 
the heathen, and was no longer habitable. 

But the seal of authority had been put upon 
the mission. Napoleon III hastened to give 
it a royal reception. Bismarck, planning a 
raid in other quarters, was as soft as silk. 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 195 

and the Czar was as polite as a bridegroom. 
What the ultimate consequence would have 
been if Burlingame, that forceful apostle of 
justice, had lived to conduct affairs is prob- 
lematical. Whether he could have steered 
the Chinese boat through the subsequent storm 
due to the reactionaries within the kingdom 
and the radicals without, is a question. He 
died in St. Petersburg. But his philosophy 
and the questions he raised are not dead. 



CHAPTER TWELVE 

"A DUTY TO HUMANITY," THE END 
OF AN EMPIRE 

The Diplomacy of the War with Spain — The Crime 
of National Pride and Procrastination — The Verdict 
of History — The Plight of Cuba — Revolution Engi- 
neered in New York — Mutual Cruelties — ^American 
"Pirates" — Cleveland's Firm Hand — Woodford vs. 
Sagasta, a Triumph of Fair Play — Concessions 
Made by Spain — "Home Rule" — Removal of Weyler 
— "Autonomy" — Revocation of Reconcentration — 
Isabel's Despair — The Intervention of the Pope — 
Final Concessions and Armistice — "Remember the 
Maine'' — An Intercepted Insult — The Recalled Min- 
ister and the Fateful Message to Congress — A Trib- 
ute to Spanish Courtesy. 

IMAGINE that the average American 
would be astonished upon an impartial 
examination of the diplomatic corre- 
spondence leading up to the battle of Manila 
Bay and the capture of San Juan Hill. As 
far as the United States was concerned it re- 

196 



DRAMATIC MOMENTS 197 

veals no injury done us by the Spaniards. 
The war sprang out of increasing demands 
made by President JMcKinley. The record 
shows that these were met by the Castilians in 
a really remarkably yielding spirit, considering 
their traditionally sensitive "National Hon- 
our" and unbounded pride. And as far as the 
war was the result of a failure of negotiation, 
or in the power of the Spaniard to avoid by 
any possible action, it turned upon a punctilio, 
a really absurd quibble which had little to do 
with the merits of the affair, and upon a few 
days' procrastination upon the part of the 
Spaniards. And even this, which we deemed a 
delay, amounted to violent precipitation of ac- 
tion to the mind of Madrid. 

Before recording the details of the Ameri- 
can Minister's hectic weeks in Madrid, it must 
be clearly said that there is no longer any 
question but that the war was a blessing to all 
parties concerned ; and that it was in all proba- 
bility the only possible solution of an interna- 
tional scandal. It should be classed as a great 



198 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

surgical operation, whereby an incurable sore 
was cut out of the Spanish body politic, against 
its will, but to its salvation. The patient, both 
before, during and after the operation, con- 
ducted himself toward the doctor in a manner 
highly to his credit. 

These facts stand forth, indisputable: 

That for sixty years or more the island of 
Cuba had been as badly misgoverned, from the 
Anglo-Saxon point of view, as it was possible 
to misgovern it. It was saddled with an atro- 
cious economic system, a mediaeval military 
dictatorship operated by an autocratic and ir- 
responsible governor, bled by excessive public 
taxes and private graft, and in an uproar all 
the time. 

Even with the most honourable intentions in 
the world it was quite impossible for the Span- 
iards ever to restore what we understand by 
law and order. 

These two facts constitute the case of the 
United States — and the whole case. Follow- 
ing the immediate discussions and causes of 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 199 

hostilities, the sympathies of the impartial 
reader will lean toward the anxious and cor- 
nered inheritors of the splendours of Isabella. 

The fact that public opinion in the United 
States was in a fever heat cannot be given as 
a legitimate casus belli by a statesman, and the 
fulminations of senators and representatives 
have never in our history been a safe guide to 
foreign policy. If these last had been any 
criterion we should have invaded and annexed 
Cuba long ago without any other reason than 
that it was manifestly placed there by the Lord 
to be owned by us. 

Before picturing the negotiations between 
Washington and Madrid, so abruptly finished 
by the famous message of the 11th of April, 
1898, it is necessary to point out that it was 
universally recognized that any message leav- 
ing a decision to Congress amounted to a decla- 
ration of war. The views of Congress were 
that the insurgents were the angelic and saintly 
victims of an inhuman warfare — that the con- 
centration camps were not only an outrage 



200 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

upon humanity, but a hideous breach of inter- 
national law; that the Maine had been blown 
up by the Spanish Government; and that, any- 
way, Cuba was to be freed regardless of cir- 
cumstances, and by war, no matter what any- 
body said. 

This fact must be kept in mind. It was 
thoroughly understood by all hands, the efforts 
for a peaceful solution hinged upon preventing 
McKinley's giving Congress its head. And 
so all discussion finally centred upon whether 
he was or was not to send a message of this 
sort. 

Granting that the war was of great benefit 
to Spain, Cuba, and the United States, as well 
as an indispensable step both in the develop- 
ment of this country as a World Power, and in 
the establishment of a new sense of interna- 
tional comitj^ based upon justice and "the de- 
cent respect for the opinion" of mankind, as 
well as "National Interest," it must be ad- 
mitted that, in his diplomatic action, McKinley 
showed none of the executive strength and con- 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 201 

trol that characterized both Grant and Cleve- 
land in handling this same problem. In fact 
he didn't handle it at all. He turned it over to 
the mob to handle — a proceeding that in many 
other instances in our history would have led to 
war. 

When Cleveland left the tiller and William 
McKinley took charge of affairs, the situation 
was about as follows : 

In February, 1895, revolution broke out in 
Cuba. It was brought on mainly by the mani- 
fest incapacity of even the most radical Span- 
ish mind to conceive of a liberal colonial policy. 
To this was added a high protective American 
tariff on sugar, which tended to ruin the prin- 
cipal industry, and cause great poverty and 
suffering on the island. While we are posing 
as apostles of a new era of good will toward 
men and of policies of world-wide justice which 
will reduce wars to a minimum, it is worth while 
taking a little thought to the manifest hard- 
ships and ill feeling continually engendered by 
artificial tampering with economic laws upon 



202 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

arbitrary boundary lines — in which we are the 
worst offenders on earth. 

The Revolution was financed and recruited 
in large measure from the United States, with 
headquarters at New York. Maximo Gomez 
was called from San Domingo to take com- 
mand. 

The war started in at once with the utmost 
ferocity on both sides. It is impossible at this 
date to choose between the methods of the com- 
batants. The Cubans were the ones to begin 
the deliberate work of devastation. Gomez's 
first act was to issue an order that all planta- 
tions should stop their labours, and that who- 
ever should attempt to grind the sugar crop 
would have his cane burned and his buildings 
demoHshed, and would be considered as an en- 
emy, treated as a traitor, and be tried as such 
in case of his capture. Since he carried out 
this policy and threat to the letter, it is impos- 
sible for any one aware of the facts to weep 
with the insurgents over the ruin of industry 
and the destruction of the island. 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 203 

General Weyler went to work in true Span- 
ish fashion to clean the rebels up. This he 
could not do because he could not catch them. 
So he ordered the whole populace into con- 
centration camps. In spite of the violent 
statements common at the time, the fact is that 
such an order is not forbidden by the recognized 
laws of war, nor is it an uncommon occurrence. 
It was practised both in the Civil War and in 
South Africa too. The horror of it was that it 
was impossible properly to feed these people — 
particularly since the rebels made all business a 
crime and the introduction of food to "towns 
occupied by the enemy" a cause for summary 
execution. 

Filibustering on a grand scale started in the 
United States. Although most of our availa- 
ble coast patrol earnestly and vigorously en- 
deavoured to stop it, the Spaniards claimed 
continuously and bitterly that our winking at 
these forays prolonged the trouble. 

On the other hand the Spaniards persisted 
in considering as "pirates" all filibusters they 



204 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

caught and could not even conceive of any 
reason why they should not be shot on the 
spot. When these were American citizens, 
"fighting for freedom," this attitude caused the 
greatest fury in the United States. As a mat- 
ter of fact no Americans were executed at this 
time, but the State Department had to make 
vigorous appeals several times to prevent it. 

Incidents like this, and a press screaming 
with accounts of atrocities of "Weyler, the 
Butcher," together with the unquestioned an- 
archy and misery in the island, inflamed a 
Congress abeady in sympathy with the revolu- 
tion to introduce resolutions as regularly as 
clockwork. In one form or another these all 
denounced Spain and demanded the independ- 
ence of Cuba. The most violent of these 
Congressional broadsides was delivered by 
John Sherman, afterward made Secretary of 
State by McKinley, and was based upon a 
newspaper story later found to be without any 
foundation whatever. 

Meanwhile President Cleveland had kindly 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 205 

and firmly kept the affair in his own hands, and 
reiterated the American position: 

First : that there seemed to be no prospect of 
the revolt ever coming to a conclusion under 
existing conditions until the country was 
ruined completely. 

Secondly: that the United States could not 
very well keep hands off this situation indefi- 
nitely. The reasons given were very frank 
and concise: That our pecuniary loss was 
enormous; that the sympathy of the people 
with the revolution was very great; that the 
governments were always at odds about Cu- 
bans naturalized in America carrying on 
propaganda in New York and filibustering to 
Cuba; that the insurrection involved the polic- 
ing of an immense seacoast; that there was a 
growing and vehement demand for recogni- 
tion and violent intervention. 

Thirdly: that he offered mediation as a way 
out of the impasse. 

"It would seem that if Spain would offer 
Cuba a genuine autonomy — a measure of 



206 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

home-rule which, while preserving the sover- 
eignty of Spain, would satisfy all national re- 
quirements of her Spanish subjects — ^there 
should be no just reason why the pacification 
of the island might not be effected on that 
basis." 

Cleveland saw what apparently McKinley 
could not — that the major difficulty would be 
with the peculiar pride of the Spaniard. He 
adds: "It would keep intact the possessions 
of Spain without touching her honour, which 
will be consulted rather than impugned by the 
adequate redress of admitted grievances." 

Then just as the Cleveland administration 
came to a close the Queen issued a decree 
granting "home rule" to Cuba. It was a kind 
of emasculated, experimental home rule, in- 
vented by a people to whom such an idea was 
almost inconceivable. But it more than cov- 
ered the ground of the original Cuban com- 
plaint, and was a genuine and honest eflfort 
toward emancipation. 

Such was the state of affairs when an en- 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 207 

tirely new cast of characters took up the drama 
for the fifth act. 

William McKinley succeeded Grover Cleve- 
land, John Sherman, the veteran Olney, as 
Secretary of State, and General Stewart Lyn- 
don Woodford went as minister to Spain. 
Very shortly afterward the Spanish Ministry 
underwent an even more radical transforma- 
tion. The new team constituted the most lib- 
eral as well as the ablest men in the Empire 
— Senor Praxides Mateo Sagasta, champion 
of "peace at any price save loss of dignity," be- 
came president of the council, with Senor 
GuUon, Minister of State, and Senor Moret, 
Minister for Foreign Affairs. 

The new game opened in an interview be- 
tween Woodford and the outgoing minister, 
the Duque de Tetuan. "Friendly in manner," 
it was reported, "but positive in meaning." 
Sherman's proposition was laid on the table. 
Its kernel was that the United States had a 
"duty" as well as a "right" to intervene, un- 
less Spain could settle this little affair in a 



208 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

"reasonable time." And in very definite lan- 
guage it stated that this time might be draw- 
ing to a close, and the duty become imminent. 
It ended with the suggestion that Spain make 
use of the offices of the United States in some 
manner or other to reach a final conclusion. 

These instructions had "put it up to" the 
minister to get the Spainards to agree to con- 
cessions in Cuba, to prevent an American war. 
The record of the subsequent six months is not 
only of the greatest credit to Woodford, but 
reveals an advance in Spanish policy that is lit- 
tle short of miraculous, considering antecedents 
of a thousand years of despotic sway. 

The Spaniards' answer to this preliminary 
broadside consisted in a volume of polite lan- 
guage, a futile repetition of the contention 
that if the United States would stop filibuster- 
ing expeditions all would be well. But won- 
derful to relate, they took action — for them, 
drastic action. They recalled General Wey- 
ler, replacing him with Blanco, under instruc- 
tions to alleviate the concentration curse. 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 209 

And the Queen, by imperial decree, extended 
to Cuba all the rights enjoyed by peninsular 
Spaniards, establishing in the island all the 
electoral laws of Spain, and granting auton- 
omy. 

Any fair-minded person will readily admit 
that this was not an unworthy attempt to meet 
the American position. It must be admitted 
at the same time that these measures, concilia- 
tory as they were intended to be, and in fact 
were, failed to quell the riot. The reconcen- 
trados could not be fed because the revolu- 
tionists would allow no work to be done or pro- 
duce to be grown. And they would not hear 
of autonomy. Nobody seemed to want auton- 
omy at this stage. Gomez foamed at the 
idea; and the loyal Spaniards in Cuba, banded 
together to enforce the mediaeval regime, 
screamed loudly against it. 

Still, the Spaniards had made an effort to 
meet the American demand. McKinley gave 
them full credit for it in his message, sent to 
Congress in December, 1897. Said he : 



210 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

"That the Government of Sagasta has en- 
tered upon a course from which recession with 
honour is impossible can hardly be questioned ; 
that in the few weeks it has existed it has made 
earnest of its professions is undeniable. * * * 
It is honestly due to Spain and to our friendly 
relations with Spain that she should be given a 
reasonable chance to realize her expectations 
and to approve the asserted efficacy of the new 
order of things to which she stands irrevocably 
committed. She has recalled the commander 
whose brutal orders inflamed the American 
mind and shocked the civilized world. She has 
modified the horrible order of reconcentration 
and has undertaken to care for the helpless and 
permit those who desire to to resume the culti- 
vation of their fields, * * * " and so on. He 
finished with the statement that : 

"If it shall hereafter appear to be a duty im- 
posed by our obligations to ourselves, to civili- 
zation and humanity, to intervene with force, it 
shall be without fault on our part and only be- 
cause the necessity for such action will be so 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 211 

clear as to command the support and approval 
of the civilized world." 

This is the appearance of a new and a dar- 
ing doctrine. That regardless of anything 
that Spain, with all honesty and even unheard- 
of humility, might do, this country was pre- 
pared to assume the role of the benevolent 
grandfather with the slipper, and take away 
the dangerous toys. It gave warning that 
diplomacy, in the sense of a negotiation be- 
tween nations, might avail nothing, and that 
peace might not in the least depend upon our 
relations with Spain or their efforts to pre- 
serve it. That this was the actual case we shall 
see. Sincerely in hopes that the reforms in- 
augurated by Sagasta might bring some 
measure of tranquillity, the President on the 
24th of January, 1898, told the Spanish Min- 
ister, Senor Dupuy de Lome, that he had de- 
termined to send the battleship Maine to Ha- 
vana as a mark of friendship — a well-recog- 
nized form of international compliment. Old 
General Fitzhugh Lee, Consul at Havana, 



212 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

wired to delay it, because of high feeling among 
residents, but she had sailed, and pretty soon 
dropped anchor in the harbour without a com- 
ment. 

Then the fates began putting some action 
into the piece. Senor Dupuy de Lome, a 
faithful servant, and a courteous diplomat, 
wrote a letter to a friend. Probably it was the 
mildest personal letter he had written for a 
year. It was his private opinion of the Presi- 
dent's message. 

"The message has been a disillusionment to 
the insurgents, who expected something dif- 
ferent; but I regard it as bad. Besides the 
ingrained and inevitable ill-breeding with which 
is repeated all that the press and public opinion 
in Spain have said about Weyler, it once more 
shows that McKinley is weak and a bidder for 
the admiration of the crowd, besides being a 
would-be politician who tries to leave a door 
open behind himself while keeping on good 
terms with the jingoes of the party." 

An enterprising journalist, whose zeal cer- 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 213 

tainly exceeded his propriety, intercepted and 
opened the letter, and it was printed broad- 
cast over the United States on the 9th of Feb- 
ruary. 

Of course, nobody stopped to reflect that 
even an ambassador as ultra-polite and court- 
eous as a Spaniard probably had an opinion of 
his own, and that it was not extraordinary that 
he should have considered the President impo- 
lite as well as outrageous in dictating to Spain 
as if he had been its nurse and vilifying Span- 
ish soldiers with no reference to Cuban black- 
guards. The whole country flamed in fury 
from Hatteras to the Golden Gate. 

The minister telegraphed Madrid at once, 
saying that his position would probably be un- 
tenable and notifying the Queen to decide upon 
her course without reference to him in any way. 
Promptljr, on the next day, he received his re- 
call from the Minister of State. 

This was a link in the chain. And yet it is 
impossible to charge Spain with the incident in 
any degree. The recall is the fastest on 



214 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

record, and reveals an anxious desire to pro- 
pitiate the United States incompatible with any 
theory except one of ultra-pacifism. 

Nevertheless, it was a link. Or rather it was 
another faggot to feed the flame of popular 
opinion upon which the President was riding. 
The flame shortly developed into a conflagra- 
tion. 

At 9:40 P. M., February 15th, without any 
prologue, the battleship Blaine blew up and 
sank. 

A court of inquiry established that the vessel 
was blown up from without — probably by a 
mine. Who blew it up, there was and still is 
no evidence. It is practically settled beyond 
the realms of possibility of error that it was 
not the Spanish Government. 

The subsequent war-cry, ^'Remember the 
Maine'' was a popular slogan that could hardly 
take into account the fact that the utmost sym- 
pathy and regret was expressed by the Queen 
and the Premier of Spain, and that Senor 
Gullon immediately promised every reparation 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 215 

possible if it should prove to be the fault of 
Spanish authorities. 

These incidentals were the popular courses 
of war. But to the statesman they were not 
even hard diplomatic problems. They were 
merely the bellows behind the wind blowing for 
war, to be used for popular support in case 
war should be declared for other reasons. Un- 
less, indeed, it was the pressure of this opinion 
that caused them to begin it. 

The most tangible immediate effect was an 
appropriation of $50,000,000 by Congress 
*'for the National defence and each and every 
purpose connected therewith." 

I think I have made it clear that we had so 
far no grievance against Spain except her fail- 
ure to bring about peace in Cuba ; and that she 
had taken our orders as far as she was capable. 
At this moment she was put really into an un- 
tenable position. For as fast as she advanced 
with liberal propositions and the olive branch, 
so much the more confident did the rebels be- 
come, and so much the greater their demands. 



216 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

Our pressure for peace was all directed toward 
the Spaniards. Gomez met their messengers, 
undertaking to make terms, with instant death 
by a firing squad. 

After this appropriation Sagasta recognized 
that he would have to take some drastic action. 

Under the impression that the object of his 
negotiations was to keep the peace if pos- 
sible; Woodford, our minister, worked over- 
time in Madrid. From March 17th to April 
11th he drew proposal after proposal out of 
the Spanish Council and he never sent a dis- 
patch but that reiterated his conviction that the 
Spaniard would do anything, no matter what, 
to prevent a rupture, short of what they con- 
sidered National dishonour. On the 17th he 
wrote : 

"Senor Sagasta, an experienced statesman, 
a loyal Spaniard, and a faithful friend of the 
Queen * * * would do anything for peace 
that Spain would approve and accept." 

On the 18th: 

"Sagasta has finally and positively declared 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 217 

for peace at any terms at all consistent with 
Spanish honour." 

On the 19th he cabled: 

"If you will acquaint me fully with general 
settlement desired, I believe Spanish Govern- 
ment will offer without compulsion, and upon 
its own motion, such terms of settlement as may 
be satisfactory to both nations. Large liberty 
as to details should be offered to Spain, but 
your friendship is recognized and appreciated, 
and I now believe it will be a pleasure to Span- 
ish Government to propose what will probably 
be satisfactory to both." 

Invaluable, kindly man. He was one of the 
many diplomats this nation has had whose 
native straightforward courtesy and patent 
honesty had given him the confidence as much 
of his adversaries as of his own people. And 
it is clear, moreover, that he could do what he 
said. The spirit of charity is invincible — ex- 
cept against cannibals, Barbary pirates, and 
Huns. 

WilHam Rufus Day, acting Secretary of 



218 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

State, replied to this optimistic cable in almost 
savage style. Said he: 

"There remain general conditions in Cuba 
which cannot be endured, and which will de- 
mand action on our part unless Spain restores 
honourable peace. * * * April 15 is none too 
early date for accomplishment of these pur- 
poses. * * * It is proper that you should know 
that, unless events otherwise indicate, the 
President, having exhausted diplomatic agen- 
cies to secure peace in Cuba, will lay the whole 
question before Congress." 

On the 24th the Spanish Cabinet submitted 
a plan. They agreed to an immediate armis- 
tice, provided the Cubans would do the same; 
and agreed to submit terms of peace to the 
Cuban Congress, in the meantime having 
granted that Congress authority to negotiate 
peace. 

Certain it is that they were "coming across," 
as the phrase goes. 

But Secretary Day was not to be satisfied 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 219 

with this. His next word on March 27th was: 

"See if following can be done: 

"First. Armistice until October 1. Nego- 
tiations meantime looking for peace between 
Spain and insurgents through friendly offices 
of President, United States. 

"Second. Immediate revocation of recon- 
centrado order. * * * 

"Add if possible: 

"Third, If terms of peace not satisfactorily 
settled by October 1, President of United 
States to be final arbitrator between Spain and 
insurgents. 

"If Spain agrees, President will use friendly 
offices to get insurgents to accept plan." 

Driven by repeated cables from Washington 
saying that no delay could be brooked, Wood- 
ford wired home : 

"Have had conference this afternoon with 
the President of the Council, the Minister for 
Foreign Affairs and Minister for Colonies. 
Conference adjourned until Thursday after- 



220 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

noon, March 31. I have sincere belief that ar- 
rangement will then be reached, honourable to 
Spain and satisfactory to the United States 
and Cuba. I beg you to withhold all action 
until you receive my report * * * Thursday 
night, March 31." 

On the next day the reconcentration orders 
were revoked. 

That afternoon at 4 :30 the Spanish Cabinet 
agreed to the American terms, with one fatal 
exception. They insisted that the offer of the 
armistice should originate with the insurgents. 

Here was a pretty thing for grown-up na- 
tions to go to war about. Woodford might 
well call it a punctilio. Punctilio it was. 
But to the Spanish mind it was everything. 
To make the offer, these officers believed, 
would be to raise a whirlwind in Spain. 
Rather all go down together. 

But this was not all. The Pope, at this 
juncture, offered his services. The Spanish 
jumped at the chance to get out of this hole 
their national pride had placed them in. They 



IlSr AMEMCAlSr DIPLOMACY 221 

agreed readily to accept any plan for the 
cessation of hostilities proposed by his Holi- 
ness. He might even propose that they initi- 
ate them. It was a way out. 

Senor Gallon tore over to Woodford with 
the proposition. Woodford thought he had 
saved the day. He wired his government that 
Spain would accept Pope's suggestion for an 
armistice, asking only that the United States 
remove their fleet from Cuban waters." 

Here we have the trouble again, if it be 
trouble. The Spaniard wished to have some 
faint sign of independence — some condition 
exacted for the satisfaction of an old, proud 
and noble race. 

Day was inexorable. His answer to this 
proposal said: "The disposition of our fleet 
must be left to us. An armistice to be effective 
must be immediately proffered and accepted 
by insurgents. * * * The President cannot 
hold his message longer than Tuesday." 

Woodford, bent upon his own problem of 
reaching a satisfactory conclusion with Spain, 



222 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

finally reached it. The Queen yielded com- 
pletely, with great emotion. The paper she 
was prepared to sign was a passionate renun- 
ciation. The Minister's dispatch to President 
McKinley read : 

^'^Should the Queen proclaim the following 
before 12 o'clock noon on Wednesday, April 
6th, will you sustain the Queen, and can you 
prevent hostile action by Congress? 

'' 'At the request of the Holy Father, in this 
passion week, and in the name of Christ, I pro- 
claim immediate and unconditional suspen- 
sion of hostilities in the Island of Cuba, 

'''This suspension to become immediately 
effective so soon as accepted by the insurgents 
in that island, and to continue for the space 
of six months, to the 5th of October, 1898, 

" 'I do this to give time for passion to cease, 
and in the sincere hope and belief that during 
this suspension permanent and honourable 
peace may be obtained between the insular 
government of Cuba and those of my subjects 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 223 

in that island who are now in rebellion against 
the authority of Spain, 

" 'I pray the blessing of Heaven upon this 
truce of God, which I now declare in His name 
and with the sanction of the Holy Father of 
all Christendom' " 

Woodford continued his plea in these words : 

"Please read this in the light of my previous 
telegrams and letters. I believe this means 
peace, which the sober judgment of our people 
will approve long before next November, and 
which must be approved at the bar of final 
history. * * * I will show your reply to the 
Queen in person, and I believe that you will 
approve this last conscientious offer for peace." 

And on the 9th of August, even in the face 
of a discouraging reply, the Spaniards ordered 
General Blanco to proclaim the armistice. 

Going over this record it has come home to 
me with great force that the American people 
have never given Spain the credit for this su- 
preme effort ; and that the charity, forbearance 



224 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

and tolerant good will which have sometimes 
been manifest with us almost to a fault, were 
totally lacking, and that Woodford was jus- 
tified in the conclusions of his final telegram: 

" * * * I believe that you will get final set- 
tlement before August 1 on one of the follow- 
ing bases: Either such autonomy as the in- 
surgents may agree to accept, or recognition by 
Spain of the independence of the island, or 
cession of the island to the United States. I 
hope that nothing will be done to humiliate 
Spain." 

He said that he was satisfied that the gov- 
ernment at Madrid was going, and was loyally 
ready to go, as fast and as far as it could. 

And this the whole record abundantly con- 
firms. Step by step in this one-sided diplo- 
matic encounter the Spaniards had yielded 
every demand, until now they had given all. 

Nevertheless, on the 11th of April, McKin- 
ley sent the message to Congress. The only 
mention in this war document of the final 
yielding of the Queen was a terse statement. 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 225 

without comment, that he had heard General 
Blanco had been ordered to suspend hostilities. 

But, as everyone knew, the message was the 
casting of the die for war. 

The purpose of this review is not to belittle 
the effects of the Spanish War — its benefits are 
manifest — nor even to conclude that McKinley 
was wrong in determining once and for all to 
end the Cuban cancer by a clean sweep, but, in 
justice to the Spaniards, to point out that the 
war was the result of this determination, and 
was launched with this purpose quite regardless 
of diplomacy so ably conducted by Woodford, 
and in the face of the most extraordinary ef- 
forts and concessions on the part of the Queen. 
Diplomacy had nothing to do with the matter. 
The Spaniard did not want to fight, had no in- 
tention of fighting, and met our negotiations 
much more than half way, and a great deal 
further than any impartial and sympathetic 
observer would have supposed possible. The 
only grievance we had against them at all was 
inherent, and not subject to change — a mind 



226 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

given to procrastination and delay, a belief in 
their own institutions, and a sensitive code of 
national honour. To say that we considered 
this a cause for war is of course ridiculous. 

The answer is that sixty years of riot in Cuba 
was all we could stand, and that we purposed to 
end it. And nothing the Spaniard or our 
minister could do or say had any effect upon 
the resolution. So it was. And this was 
probably correct. Eut with it let us give the 
Spaniard all credit. Tv/o years of diplomatic 
negotiations were all on his side. 



CHAPTER THIRTEElSr 

THE COUP D'ETAT 
THE INSIDE STORY OF PANAMA 

The Man Behind the Revolution — Room 1162, 
Waldorf Astoria — The Liberty Hall of Panama — 
Bunau-Varilla Goes Scouting in Washington — The 
Three Horns of the Panama Dilemma — Reading the 
Future Actions of the Government — Playing with 
Destiny — A Kingdom for a Warship — Victory on 
the Isthmus — "Time is of the Essence" — Intrigue 
and Procrastination Squelched by Theodore Roose- 
velt. The Dramatic Finish in John Hay's Resi- 
dence. 

ON September 23, 1902, in room 1162 
of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, the 
cradle of revolution, two men were in 
eager conference. One was Doctor Manuel 
Amador, conspirator plenipotentiary from 
Panama, prototype of those zealous but impo- 
tent soldiers of fortune that have engineered 
uproar in Central America as a chronic pas- 

227 



228 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

time for the last century. He was fiery, but 
inconstant, patriotic but bombastic, zealous but 
visionary, mighty to plot but utterly incapable 
of action. Vanity, pride, and despair were 
written on his features. 

The other man, Bunau-Varilla, was his 
antithesis in every respect. He was clear cut, 
with lines of prompt, decisive action written all 
over his features. He was a Frenchman, 
gifted with all the imagination and daring of 
his race. Courage, endurance, brilliant intel- 
ligence, limitless resources, a flashing wit, and 
a contempt for obstacles, had already made his 
name famous throughout the civilized world, 
and yet he was in a sense an adventurer. Like 
a knight of old on the road to Palestine, he 
represented nobody. In the tremendous and 
dangerous game of world politics and national 
destinies he played a lone hand, relying only 
upon his own unbounded spirit and consum- 
mate audacity. 

He had just arrived in New York from j 
Paris. Upon learning of the amazing action 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 229 

of Colombia, this indomitable champion of the 
Isthmian canal had gone into action. Within 
half an hour he was in the office of M. Lindo. 
M. Lindo was the head of the largest banking 
house of New York and Panama. We have 
M. Bunau-Varilla's own record of events. 

" 'Well, M. Lindo,' said I, after the first ex- 
change of compliments, *is the rumour true 
that the people of Panama are going to make 
a revolution?' 

"He shrugged his shoulders in a dishearten- 
ing way and said : 'Fait an recursos/ ( 'They 
have no financial means.') 

" 'What !' said I, disappointed at this 
answer. 'These people who are ever ready to 
make a revolution for insignificant causes, are 
going to keep quiet when Colombia decrees 
that they must die of hunger.' 

"'It can't be helped,' he said. 'Without 
money a revolution cannot be brought about 
any more than a war. But if you care to know 
what the situation really is I will ask Amador 
to come and see you.' 



230 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

"'What!' said I, surprised, *Aiiiador is 
here?' 

" *Yes/ answered Lindo, lowering his voice, 
'he has come precisely to obtain the means of 
bringing about a revolution, but he has failed 
and is sailing for Panama in a few days. He 
will tell you all. He is in despair.' " 

It was the following morning that Amador 
and Bunau-Varilla sat face to face in room 
1162 of the Waldorf Astoria, and there lies the 
key to the Revolution of Panama, as is revealed 
by the working of this master Diplomat-at- 
Large. 

Amador was sjieaking, agitated with sup- 
pressed emotion and indignation. 

"During the past year" said he, "a group of 
citizens of the Isthmus, of whom I was one, 
have met together to consider the measures 
to be taken if Colombia rejected the Hay- 
Herran Treaty. 

"We one and all agreed that such a decision 
would ruin the inhabitants and transform the 
Isthmus into a virgin forest 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 231 

"Confronted by a decision so despotic, we 
decided to prepare for an armed combat, rather 
than submit passively to the tyrant's sentence 
of death. 

"But Colombia was capable of crushing all 
resistance. * * * Consequently we turned our 
eyes toward the great American Republic. * * * 

"Why should not this great Republic, so 
rich, so powerful, give the necessary co-opera- 
tion in money and military force ? 

"This idea seemed to us so reasonable that 
we decided to entrust with a mission to the 
United States a certain Beers, more generally 
known by the name of Captain Beers. 

"He was an employee of the Panama Rail- 
road. His mission consisted in visiting the 
right persons in order to learn whether this 
double support could be obtained. 

"The persons whom Beers saw assured him 
that nothing was easier and they promised to 
obtain all that we asked for. * * * 

"Our friends then decided to delegate two of 
their number in order to reach a final under- 



232 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

standing. I was one of the two delegates but 
I was forced to go alone. As soon as I arrived 
I was received with open arms by the persons 
whom Captain Beers had seen. I was to go 
to Washington to see Mr. Hay, Secretary of 
State, in order to conclude the final transaction. 

"But suddenly the attitude of the person who 
was to take me to Washington entirely 
changed. 

"Whenever I went to see him, strict orders 
had been given to the effect that he was not in. 
I had to install myself in the hall, to camp 
there, and, so to speak, besiege his office. 
Nothing resulted from it. And there I am. 
All is lost. At any moment the conspiracy 
may be discovered and my friends judged, sen- 
tenced to death, and their property confis- 
cated. * * * " 

And the older man stopped speaking, nearly 
choked by his intense emotion. 

"Dr. Amador," said the Frenchman, "you 
are telling me a very sad story, but why did 
you withhold the name of the man who thus 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 233 

promised the gold of the American Treasury, 
the Ai^my and Navy of the United States? 
This childish proposition bears the stamp of 
the man who formulated it. * * * What, you 
believed in such empty talk? It is an unpar- 
donable folly. With your imprudence yOu 
have indeed brought yourself to a pretty pass." 

"Alas!" said Amador, "if we had been only 
dropped, but the case is much worse." And 
he went on to tell how this man had been 
warned that their messages were being inter- 
cejited but had failed to tell Amador. Con- 
cluded the unhappy filibuster, "I have been 
thus exposed unwittingly to the danger of giv- 
ing up my friends to death. * * * " 

In saying this, the old doctor could scarcely 
master his intense exasperation. 

"Calm yourself, my poor Doctor, you are 
the victim of your own heedlessness. * * * 
Tell me what are your hopes and on what are 
based your chances of success. Tell me 
calmly, methodically, precisely." 

These words soothed the exasperation of 



234 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

Amador. He remained some minutes before 
recovering his sang-froid. Then he continued 
in the following terms : 

"There is to-day only a weak Colombian gar- 
rison at Panama. * * * A revolution would 
to-day meet with no obstacles. But the Co- 
lombians have the command of the sea; their 
ships' crews are loyal. We must first, there- 
fore, acquire a fleet to prevent Colombia from 
overwhelming with her troops the province of 
Panama. 

"Besides that we want arms. It was to ob- 
tain ships and arms that I have come here. 
Our first envoy. Captain Beers, had been as- 
sured, and the same pledge was repeated to me 
when I came, that the United States would give 
us all the money we needed to buy arms and 
ships and to pay the troops." 

"How big a sum do you consider neces- 
sary?" 

"We need $6,000,000." 

"My dear Doctor," answered Bunau-Varilla, 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 235 

"you have exposed the situation to me and you 
come to ask for advice. I answer: Let me 
think it over. At first glance I see no way out 
of the labyrinth which imprisons you. To- 
morrow perhaps I shall find one. At any rate 
you ask for advice. I give it to you; remain 
here, and wait patiently until I see how the 
land lies. * * * I have not only to think my- 
self, but to find out as well what others think in 
order to get you out of the difficulty. * * * In 
the meanwhile, remain, and see nobody. If 
you want to speak to me over the 'phone take 
the name of Smith. I shall take that of 
Jones." 

And with these words, Bunau-Varilla de- 
parted. He went to solve a problem perplex- 
ing others greater than Amador. The fate of 
the great ship canal, and the future perhaps of 
more than one country, hung upon the solution 
of this problem. It was at that moment the 
subject of grave concern to Theodore Roose- 
velt, President of the United States, to the 



236 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

Foreign Office in France, to the merchants of 
the world, to the court of Tokio, as well as 
the blackmail senate in Bogota and the Demo- 
cratic opposition in the coming election. 

This delicate diplomatic situation was the 
result of an unusual series of events. 

In 1876 the great French engineer, Count 
Ferdinand de Lesseps, had formed a company 
which had purchased from Colombia the con- 
cession to build a canal across the Isthmus of 
Panama. Facing the jeers of a sceptical 
world, unparalleled physical difficulties, and 
the scourge of a fever more dreadful than war, 
an army of intrepid and loyal Frenchmen had 
struggled at the task for eight years. They 
laboured in the face of insuperable obstacles 
and almost certain death, encouraged by the 
ardour of adding this gigantic project to the 
glory and fame of their native land. This 
magnificent attribute, devotion to country, the 
secret of the splendour and power of France, 
was in this case unequal to the task of combat- 
ting the national weakness — a love of intrigue 



IN AMEMCAN DIPLOMACY 237 

and scandal. Politics got hold of the propo- 
sition, and there ensued a carnival of calumnies 
and canards, epithets and recriminations the 
like of which has hardly a parallel. 

The company went into bankruptcy ; slander 
and defamation tied the hands of the great 
engineer, and the hundreds of thousands of 
citizens who had invested in the great patriotic 
enterprise were left without a friend in the gov- 
ernment or banking interests of France. Of 
the great army of engineers and financiers, 
dreamers and adventurers that began the great 
enterprise, one only remained, still firm in his 
intention to build this canal and vindicate his 
chief and his comrades, and give lustre to the 
genius of France. 

His name was Philippe Bunau-Varilla, at 
one time chief engineer of the canal, and in the 
end the sole remaining champion of its feasibil- 
ity. He had no official capacity in France, and 
not even any further connection with the 
bankrupt company. He was obsessed with a 
mania that the world needed the canal and that 



238 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

France should have the credit. Armed with 
an indomitable will, the most exact mathe- 
matical knowledge of every detail of the work 
and the engineering problems, and his own 
private fortune, he set out to put it through. 
Public opinion, revolutions, state secrets, the 
sanctity of courts and cabinets, the power of 
armies, and the destinies of peoples were 
thenceforth his tools and his media. That the 
Senator from Missouri — old Gum-shoe Bill 
Stone — should have failed to recognize such a 
personality and such a conception is no won- 
der. Bill's reasoning was not so very bad. 
He saw a revolution engineered in Panama 
with a promptness, decision, and unerring exe- 
cution never before known. He concluded 
that it was the work of a genius. He decided 
that his great enemy, Roosevelt, was the most 
probable and convenient, if not the only genius 
on the boards. As we shall see, Roosevelt had 
no mofe to do with it than I had. 

Well, when the company went into bank- 
ruptcy, Bunau-Varilla went to Germany and 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 239 

England and Russia. He commanded the at- 
tention of czars and emperors. He hypno- 
tized international bankers. He drew pictures 
of national glory for the chancelleries of Eu- 
rope. But he could not raise the Canal from 
the dead. And then, when human effort 
failed, fate gave him an opening. It all came 
about from three things. 

1. The trip of the Oregon from San Fran- 
cisco to Santiago around Cape Horn. 

2. The eruption of Mont Pelee and the 
destruction of Saint-Pierre in Martinique. 

3. A Nicaraguan one-centavo postage 
stamp. 

The race of the Oregon convinced the United 
States that national safety demanded an 
Isthmian canal. 

The unanimous opinion and prejudice of 
Congress and the people in favour of Nica- 
ragua were shattered by the imminent danger 
of earthquakes brought home by th^ Mar- 
tinique disaster. The final argument that 
Nicaragua was not a volcanic country was met 



240 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

by Bunau-Varilla himself by mailing every 
Senator a Nicaraguan one-centavo stamp, 
showing a picture of Momotombo in spectacu- 
lar eruption above the very lake through which 
the canal was to pass. 

This turned the scales in favour of Panama. 
On the 19th of June, 1902, the Spooner bill 
passed both houses. It provided that a canal 
should be built across the Isthmus of Panama 
on condition that the French company would 
sell its interests and could give a clear title, and 
that the Department of State could make a 
satisfactory treaty with Colombia. 

The French company agreed to sell for 
$40,000,000. 

After the usual vacillation and subterfuges 
M. Herran, on behalf of Colombia, and John 
Hay, Secretary of State, signed a treaty which 
was satisfactory. It gave the United States 
control of the Canal zone, and Colombia 
$10,000,000 and $250,000 a year. 

All that remained was for the Colombian 
Senate to ratify the treaty. 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 241 

This they were under every moral obKga- 
tion to do. Colombia was ruled by a dictator. 
Under apprehension that the United States 
might build in Nicaragua he had made every 
effort and representation to obtain the treaty. 
He had ordered his minister to grant every 
privilege to the French company, so that there 
might be no question of their right to transfer 
their interest, and he had begun and pushed the 
negotiations. The whole civilized world was 
awaiting a canal with impatience, and the high- 
est reasons of state, including the military pro- 
tection of the nation, demanded that a decision 
be reached between these two routes and the 
work begun. The Colombian knew this and 
obtained his treaty and ousted Nicaragua — 
with the aid of fortune and the unremitting 
campaign of Bunau-Varilla. 

But as the treaty was signed, and all eyes 
turned to Panama, the ring at Bogota decided 
not to ratify. Their dispatches and resolu- 
tions show why, and constitute the most monu- 
mentally bare-faced and audacious blackmail 



242 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

and hold-up ever attempted in daylight by any 
civilized country. They proposed that the 
price be doubled and that the treaty should 
wait until the French concession should lapse 
and then take the French $40,000,000 for 
themselves. In other words, purely and sim- 
ply, that they should hold up one party to the 
agreement, and entirely steal the interest of 
the other. That is the whole case, completely 
substantiated by the documents, which I would 
give if there were space. No one who has not 
read them is qualified or has a right to discuss 
this Panama affair. 

What should be done under these circum- 
stances? Panama said Revolution. Old Doc- 
tor Amador had been sent to get the guns. 
He had found bad counsel, and was inoculated 
with the impossible dream of help from Wash- 
ington. His legal friends in New York had 
failed even to approach the White House with 
the proposal. 

But Bunau-Varilla was out to find a plan. 
Cognizant of every detail of the history of the 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 243 

regime, he knew that diplomatically there were 
just three possibilities: 

One was the adoption by the United States 
of the Nicaragua route, and the crashing of his 
life's work. A second was the Revolution 
whose dying hopes he now controlled. 

The third was independent action of the 
United States under an old treaty made with 
New Granada, the predecessor of Colombia, 
in 1848. 

The essential points of this treaty were: 

"1. The Government of New Granada guar- 
antees to the United States that the right of 
way or transit across the Isthmus of Panama 
upon any modes of communication that now 
exist or that may be hereafter constructed, shall 
be open and free to the government and citi- 
zens of the United States." 

The question was whether this guarantee of 
right of way upon any mode of transit that 
might be hereafter constructed, did not of it- 
self justly and necessarily imply and include 
the right of construction. 



244 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

Before he could act he felt obliged to dis- 
cover which of these plans the State Depart- 
ment had in mind. If they had given up Pan- 
ama, all was lost indeed. Unless they would 
instantly support a revolution, such a pro- 
ceeding would be suicidal. If the United 
States proposed to take the zone anyway, the 
Revolution would be superfluous. Being 
astute as well as honourable he was aware that 
under no circumstances could he acquire his in- 
formation directly, or get the slightest assur- 
ance or encouragement from the government. 
He had a higher opinion of Theodore Roose- 
velt and John Hay than many of their coun- 
trymen — ^who say that they instigated the re- 
volt — ^have since evinced. 

On this impossible errand he went to Wash- 
ington. He paid a social call upon the Hon- 
ourable Francis B. Loomis, Assistant Secre- 
tary of State. He told him that he had re- 
cently taken an important proprietary interest 
in the great French newspaper, he Matin, 

"Then you ought to present to the President 



IN AMEEICAN DIPLOMACY 245 

the compliments of Le Matin. Do you know 
Mr. Roosevelt personally?" 

"I have not that honour." 

"The President will be glad to receive you. 
I will go and inquire." 

In a few minutes he was in the presence 
of Theodore Roosevelt. Bunau-Varilla says: 
*'We conversed about Le Matin, I was await- 
ing an opportunity to bring up the Panama 
subject, Mr. Loomis having cited the publica- 
tion of the famous bordereau in the Dreyfus 
affair as being am.ong the great achievements 
of Le Matin, I jumped at the opportunity. 
The bridge was found, I crossed it. 'Mr. 
President,' I said, 'Captain Dreyfus has not 
been the only victim of detestable political pas- 
sions. Panama is another.' 

" *Oh, yes,' exclaimed the President, sud- 
denly interested. *That is true. You have 
devoted much time and effort to Panama, Mr. 
Bunau-Varilla. Well, what do you think is 
going to be the outcome of the present situa- 
tion?' 



246 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

"It was then or never. I could by his an- 
swer know exactly what the President had in 
mind. I remained silent for a moment, and 
then pronounced the following four words in 
a slow, decided manner: 

" * Mr. President, a revolution.' 

"The features of the President manifested 
profound surprise. *A revolution,' he re- 
peated, mechanically. Then he turned in- 
stinctively toward Mr. Loomis, who remained 
standing, impassive, and he said in a low tone, 
as if speaking to himself : 

" *A revolution! * * * Would it be pos- 
sible? * * * But if it became a reality, what 
would become of the plan we had thought 
^ of?' * * * He quickly recovered himself, and 
asked, 'What makes you think so?' " 

The champion of the canal returned to the 
game by stating that he had certain special in- 
dications which led infallibly to that conclu- 
sion, and withdrew. 

This was all. Every word. And yet from 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 247 

this the subtle Frenchman concluded that a 
revolution would be welcome and that the chief 
magistrate stood by the Panama route. 

It remained now for a foreigner in New 
York without boats or guns or treasury, with- 
out influence or authority, to execute the coup 
d'etat. Not the least of his difficulties was the 
inane, suspicious, proud, vain, and vacillating 
character of his revolutionists. 

One thing was certain. Without the con- 
viction that the power of the United States 
was behind them, these timid patriots would do 
nothing. 

In his dilemma he recalled a scene enacted 
under his eyes years before, when he was at 
work on the Culebra Cut. A religious civil 
war had broken out in Colombia, and the gov- 
ernment had sent troops, to subdue revolters 
on the Isthmus, and a United States cruiser in 
the harbour had landed marines, preventing 
the landing of the government troops, and all 
fighting. They had done this under the old 



248 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

treaty, by which the United States under- 
took to keep order and open transit across the 
Isthmus. 

If they would do it then, why not now? 
Anyway, he decided to stake everything upon 
this probabihty. 

But to reassure himself he went again to the 
State Department. Mr. Loomis introduced 
him to the Secretary, John Hay. It was well 
known that this great statesman regarded the 
completion of the canal of transcendant im- 
portance to the world. 

In discussing the matter Bunau-Varilla said; 

"When aU the counsels of prudence and 
friendship have been made in vain, there comes 
a moment when one has to stand still and await 
events." 

"These events," he asked the Secretary, 
"what do you think they will be?" 

"The whole thing will end in a revolution," 
answered this master of revolution. "You 
must take your measures if you do not want 
yourself to be taken by surprise." 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 249 

*'Yes," said Mr. Hay, "that is unfortunately 
the most probable hypothesis. But we shall 
not be caught napping. Orders have been 
given to naval forces on the Pacific to sail to- 
ward Panama." 

Prompt, decisive, daring action followed. 
Within a day this extraordinary man consti- 
tuted himself the Jefferson, the Washington, 
and the Benjamin Franklin of the new Re- 
public of Panama. He wrote the Declaration 
of Independence, the Constitution, a method- 
ical plan of the military operations to be con- 
ducted, complete details of the three days' de- 
fence of the Isthmus which he considered 
necessary, and a cipher code for dispatches, 
and most important of all, he prepared in ad- 
vance the exact cables to be sent appointing a 
minister plenipotentiary to the United States 
capable of the direct, reliable, and prompt ac- 
tion necessary to satisfy this exasperated coun- 
tiy. None other in fact than Philippe Bunau- 
Varilla. It was magnificent. 



250 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

With these exhibits complete, and a flag de- 
vised for the occasion by Madame, he repaired 
again to the Liberty Hall of the Isthmus of 
Panama — to wit, room 1162 Waldorf Astoria 
Hotel. 

There like a Napoleon he issued orders to 
the astonished conspirator. "Dr. Amador, the 
moment has come to clear the deck for action. 
Be satisfied with my assertions. There is no 
more time for discussing their genesis. 

"I can give you assurance that you will be 
protected by the American forces forty-eight 
hours after you have proclaimed the new Re- 
public in the whole Isthmus. 

"Then will begin a delicate period, that of 
the complete recognition of the new Republic. 
The fight will be in Washington. I take the 
responsibility of it. I take also the responsi- 
bility of obtaining for you, from a bank, or of 
furnishing you myself, the one hundred thou- 
sand dollars which are necessary to you." 

So Amador sailed with injunction to have 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 251 

the Declaration of Independence issued and a 
government in being by the 3rd of November 
— five days after his landing. And not only 
with everything prepared to the last detail, 
but with the text of the telegram he was to send 
announcing the new government and appoint- 
ing Bunau-Varilla minister plenipotentiary to 
the United States with unlimited authority to 
negotiate a concession for the canal. And 
most important of all, with the firm conviction 
that this masterful Frenchman had at his com- 
mand the navy of the United States, and the 
unbounded power and authority of Richelieu 
of old. 

This last delusion proved the crux of the 
whole affair. For no sooner had the excited 
doctor arrived than the conspirators demanded 
proof. "If Bunau-Varilla is so powerful, let 
him prove it. He says we shall be protected 
forty-eight hours after estabhshing the new 
Republic. Well? We will believe him if he 
is capable of sending an American man of war 



252 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

to Colon at our request." So they wired that 
the Colombian troops were arriving in five days 
and asked for the warship. 

So it was up to this ingenious man to send 
a warship or to make them think he sent it. 
He boarded the train for Washington. He 
went to see every secretary, senator, and gossip 
he knew or could get access to, including 
Loomis. To all he said the same thing. 

"Remember the date of November 3, 1903. 
That day will behold a repetition of what hap- 
pened there on the 1st of April, 1885. The 
armed conflict which will be the cause of it is 
expected everywhere. It is spoken of publicly 
in the press. The only difference between 
1885 and 1903 is that the blame will not be at- 
tributed to the captain of a man of war in the 
waters of Colon. It will rest on the Govern- 
ment of the United States itself." 

If the papers were not full of it before, they 
certainly were after this announcement. 

So both ends were played against the middle. 
There could be no revolution without a war- 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 253 

ship. Also, there could be no warship without 
a revolution. Very well, the United States 
had been sufficiently informed that there was 
going to be a riot on Nevember 3rd. That 
being the case, undoubtedly they would send 
the ships. It remained to use this fact to its 
limit to encourage the juntas and convince 
them that they were in the hands of a great 
power. 

Bunau-Varilla planned to leave them in their 
delusion. He looked up the position of the 
navy. The Nashville was at Kingston. He 
felt sure it would be ordered to Colon. It 
would take two days and a half to get there. 
It was now the 29th of October. He cabled 
Amador in his code. 

"All right. Will reach two days and a 
half." 

They understood this to mean that he had 
ordered a warship to their assistance that would 
arrive in two days and a half. 

This was one of the greatest impudences and 
most splendid bluffs ever made by a private in- 



254. DRAMATIC MOMENTS •■ 

dividual in international affairs. It was 
worthy of Athos at his best. 

The news was spread over the whole town 
of Colon that at Bunau-Varilla's request the 
Americans were coming to protect Panama. 
On the morning of Nov. 2nd the entire popula- 
tion was scanning the sea in doubt and curi- 
osity. As the hours passed, disappointment 
and chagrin clouded their hearts. By night, 
they were in despair. When lo ! Smoke was 
descried on the horizon. Miracle of miracles, 
— amid a burst of "delirious enthusiasm" the 
Nashville sailed into the harbour with the Star- 
Spangled Banner floating in the breeze. 

And sitting in the Waldorf Astoria the 
manipulator of events, this maker of diplomacy 
by induction and mathematics, received the 
fateful telegram: 

"Independence of the Isthmus proclaimed 
without bloodshed. 

"Amadok." 

The Colombian troops arrived all right and 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 255 

fell into the popular delusion upon sight of 
the American flag. They threatened to shoot 
every American in the vicinity. The com- 
mander of the Nashville, neither knowing nor 
caring about these plots and delusions, landed 
his marines as he was accustomed to do when 
riot seemed impending and before what ap- 
peared the armed intervention of the United 
States, the Colombians withdrew. Panama 
was a free and independent Republic. 

In the entire history of our diplomacy there 
is' no finer example of the power and success of 
quick and drastic measures than that now taken 
by Theodore Roosevelt. Nicaraguans, peace 
cranks, sentimental adherents of Colombia, old 
line political opponents, were lining up for ten 
years more of harangue and argument, and the 
Colombian cable began frantically to offer any- 
thing on earth to get back into the running. 
Roosevelt says he took the Canal. It must 
have been with peculiar pleasure that within 
a week after the events recounted he received 
M. Bunau-Varilla in state at the White House 



256 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

as the accredited minister plenipotentiary from 
the now fully recognized Republic of Panama. 

No two men ever worked with greater har- 
mony and dispatch than this astonishing am- 
bassador and John Hay. Another grave dan- 
ger was impending. Panama was sending 
two of its bombastic citizens to haggle and de- 
bate and parade their importance at Wash- 
ington. After their arrival all accomplish- 
ment would have been at the mercy of endless 
conversation and formal triviahties. 

Success in the consummation of the treaty 
depended upon rapidity of movement. 

On Sunday, Nov. 15th, John Hay wrote to 
Bunau-Varilla : 

''Dear Mr. Minister: I enclose a project 
of a Treaty. Please return it to me with your 
suggestions at your earliest convenience." 

The sequel might be a lesson to all the for- 
eign offices and ambassadors in the world. It 
is a demonstration of the fact that two capable 
and fair-minded men can come to an interna- 
tional agreement without interminable formal- 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 257 

ity and conventions, proposals and counter 
proposals. That where both parties honestly 
and earnestly desire justice for the other, as 
well as themselves, and are not burdened with 
the dead wood of precedent and the desire for 
some concealed advantage, they can reach a 
satisfactory conclusion in an incredibly short 
time. 

Bunau-Varilla, a Frenchman, whose life Had 
been dedicated to this international canal, sat 
down that very day with the Hay-Pauncefote 
treaty between England and America, the old 
treaty with Colombia, his instructions from 
Panama, and his sense of fair play, and wrote 
a document which was not only satisfactory to 
John Hay, but to the suspicious Panamanians 
and to the hostile senate and posterity. He 
sent it to the Secretary of State saying it was 
his suggestion. 

On the 18th he received this short summons: 

"Will you kindly call at my house at six o'clock 
to-day ? 

"John Hay." 



258 DEAMATIC MOMENTS 

The newspaper reporters were at the door. 
They had seen the head of the Treaties Bureau 
go in, and were expecting an historical event. 

The Hay-Bunau-Varilla treaty was signed 
within a few minutes, just fifteen days after 
the birth of the new nation. It is recorded that 
the minister sealed the bond with John Hay's 
signet ring. 

It gave the United States the use, occupa- 
tion, and control of the canal zone in perpetuity 
for $10,000,000. . 

Next morning the committee arrived from 
Panama to palaver. It was too late. 

On the following day General Reyes arrived 
from Colombia to intrigue. It was too late. 

Prompt decisive action had at last given the 
United States an essential military control over 
its own waters, and the world the prospect of 
an inestimable boon. 

Moreover it had saved the country from a 
most embarrassing position it would have been 
in toward the French Repubhc. No one knew 
better than Roosevelt that France could not 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 259 

stand by idle and allow Colombia to plunder 
her citizens out of a life's work and sacrifice, 
and $40,000,000 in cold cash ; and yet, any ac- 
tion that France could have taken to prevent 
such a solution would have constituted a most 
unwelcome challenge to the American Doc- 
trine of Monroe. 

Without reserve it is our pleasure to give 
first prize for the conception and initiative in 
this great enterprise to France. For the exe- 
cution of the most successful revolution on rec- 
ord, we recommend Bunau-Varilla, who has 
since received the decoration of the Legion of 
Honour for conspicuous bravery on the firing 
line at Verdun where he lost a leg. The ulti- 
mate responsible action stands to the everlast- 
ing credit of Theodore Roosevelt. 



CHAPTER FOURTEEN 

SOME LESSONS IN CIVILITY 

Premonitions — The King of Prussia's Precious Doc- 
trines in 1823 — The Oppressed Revolutionists of 
Germany — Debut of the Prussian Bully in Samoa — 
The Emperor's Fatal Birthday — The Advent of the 
Famous Formula: "Impossible Ultimatum, Instant 
Defensive Invasion and Annexation" — Leary of the 
Adams Takes a Hand — SchrecMichkeit Foiled by a 
Hui'ricane — "The Organization of Failure in the 
Midst of Hate"— Why the Kaiser Did Not Take 
Uncle Sam by "The Scruff of the Neck"— "If You 
Want a Fight, You Can Have It Now" — Roosevelt 
Calls the Teuton Bluff — A Case of Arbitration — 
Designs on the Caribbean — An Opinion by John Hay. 

A SURVEY of the actions of the Im- 
perial German Government which 
are the basis of the deep-seated con- 
viction of our Department of State that the 
Hohenzollern dynasty has far-reaching de- 
signs upon the integrity of American soil and 
the inviolability of the "American System" re- 

260 



DRAMATIC MOMENTS 261 

veals that they date from the decision of the 
Kaiser to drop Bismarck, the great pilot. The 
Iron Chancellor developed to its deadly con- 
clusion the brutal policy of the Greaf Fred- 
erick, and deserves the lion's share of the dis- 
credit for the fatal ambition for conquest and 
dominion that has undermined the Teutonic 
character. But since his designs were defi- 
nitely confined to other spheres they gave the 
United States no cause for alarm. In fact, 
up to that time our experience with the Ger- 
man people had been the reverse of suspicious. 
The country had welcomed great numbers of 
them, whom, even in the passions of to-day, 
no one can accuse of being advocates of blood 
and iron militarism run a-muck, or aspirants 
for the first tier of boxes in the sun. They 
were revolters against regal prerogative, and 
came in the name of Liberty and joined the 
ranks of the Union forces in the Civil War for 
emancipation. The consequence was that our 
assumption was heavily in favour of the Ger- 
man a decade ago. 



262 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

The first sign we had that a "superman" was 
being evolved contained little portent of dan- 
ger to the continent we guard so jealously. 
But it aroused in America a sudden realization 
of an important event — the arrival of a new and 
particularly disgusting character on the inter- 
national stage. It was the debut in Washing- 
ton of the Prussian bully. He was discovered 
swaggering insolently down the shores of the 
Pacific, twirling his mustachios and kicking 
the pedestrians in the selfsame manner so 
familiar on the sidewalks of Potsdam. 

It happened in Samoa. The Samoans were 
a picturesque, comely and gentle people, whose 
sole faults were a childish irresponsibility 
in regard to their neighbours' cocoanuts 
and an inherent inability to determine who 
should be king. A short time previously the 
consuls of England, the United States and 
Germany had settled a difference of opinion 
by making one rival claimant, Malietoa 
Laupepa, king, and another, Tamasese, vice- 
king. Thus as Stevenson says : "in addition to 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 263 

the old conundrum, 'Who is the King?' they 
had supphed a new one, 'What is a vice-king?' " 

Malietoa Laupepa was a very kindly, trust- 
ing, high-minded old fellow, whose mild and 
gentle disposition made him an easy mark for 
the preliminary canters of frightfulness. His 
rule at most was only nominal as far as Euro- 
pean interests were concerned. The three con- 
suls presided over a neutral territory about the 
port of Apia, and acted as an advisory board 
for the monarch. 

There had been some trouble due to petty 
thefts from the plantation of a German firm. 
This firm was presided over at the time by 
Captain Brandeis, an artillery officer whose 
warlike intentions and predilections were so 
sedulously concealed that he pretended to be a 
mere clerk in the office. The Germans had in- 
sisted upon putting the thieves in a private 
jail of their own, and exacting from the help- 
less old king satisfaction of a nature so drastic 
as to bring forth violent protests from the 
English and American consuls. The matter 



264 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

had been made the subject of an international 
conference in Washington, which adjourned 
on July 26, 1885. It was understood that this 
adjournment was for the consuls to get fur- 
ther instructions from home and in the mean- 
time that no action should be taken by any 
government. 

Nevertheless pretty soon the port of Apia 
began to resemble a royal review at Wilhelms- 
haven. The King was in the interior, the petty 
thieves were in jail, and the island was as quiet 
and dreamy as a picture of Heaven. By the 
end of August, 1887, there were five German 
ships of war in the obscure little bay. Robert 
Louis Stevenson thus describes the subsequent 
amazing proceedings : 

*'They waited inactive, as a burglar waits till 
the patrol goes by, and on the 23d, when the 
mail had left for Sydney, when the eyes of the 
world were withdrawn, and Samoa plunged 
again for a period of weeks into her original 
island obscurity, Becker opened his guns. 
[Becker was the German Consul.] The pol- 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 265 

icy was too cunning to seem dignified. * * * 
and helped shake men's reliance on the word 
of Germany. On the day named, an ulti- 
matum reached Malietoa at Afenga, whither 
he had retired months before to avoid friction. 
A fine of one thousand dollars and an ifo, or 
public humiliation, were demanded for the af- 
fair of the Emperor's birthday. Twelve thou- 
sand dollars were to be 'paid quickly' for thefts 
from German plantations in the course of the 
last four years." Becker concluded by saying 
he would be at Afenga next morning at 11 
o'clock. 

This was the same old game, then new to us, 
cropping up in the South Seas — an outrageous 
demand, coupled with an explosive ultimatum 
attached to a short-timed fuse. 

The thefts were negligible and had been set- 
tled already. The only new matter was this 
terrible "affair of the Emperor's birthday." 

Let us look into it. On March 22d, which 
was undoubtedly the birthday of the Emperor, 
some Germans assembled in a pubhc bar in the 



266 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

neutral territory of Apia. Much drinking and 
''hochmg' finally resulted in a "squabble" with 
some other convivialists, ending in what Becker 
called a riot. *For this, four natives were ar- 
rested, and haled before a German magistrate. 
He acquitted one of these. The others he 
convicted of assault. The case was appealed 
to the full court — that is, the three consuls to- 
gether. The American and British consuls 
considered the charges petty and unproved and 
reversed the decision. And that was the whole 
business called by the German Commander 
"The trampling upon, by Malietoa, of the Ger- 
man Emperor." It was not even mentioned 
three months later in the conference between 
the three nations at Washington. 

At 11 A. M. Becker was at the place named. 
The King asked for a day's delay to consider. 
Becker declared war on the spot, appointed the 
bewildered Tamasese King under the super- 
vision and protection of the redoubtable Bran- 
deis and the five warships, ran the German flag 
over his headquarters, and declared his juris- 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 267 

diction over the whole works, including the 
neutral territory. He seized the harmless old 
King of Samoa and shipped him off a prisoner 
to Germany. The poor feltew appealed in 
vain to the justice of heaven and the protec- 
tion of the consuls. 

But in Washington the affair was not so 
lightly regarded. It constituted a breach of 
faith almost inconceivable to them and the pre- 
text was as stupid as it was brazen. To begin 
with, that the Kaiser was such a holy idol that 
any disturbance upon his birthday in any part 
of the earth was sacrilege and lese majeste was 
a novel and startling discovery. That the 
King of Samoa lying under the palms fifty 
miles away could be responsible for a tavern 
brawl in a neutral seaport, distinctly outside 
his jurisdiction, and distinctly inside of that of 
the three consuls — a neutrality which the Sa- 
moans scrupulously observed even in the midst 
of war — was too much for the world to swallow. 

The American and British consuls refused to 
recognize the new king, or the German juris- 



268 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

diction. The islanders rose under another 
leader, a romantic and Herculean youth named 
Mataaf a, and war broke loose. The Germans, 
beheving the situation in hand, let some of their 
ships go. The Americans believing other- 
wise dispatched Captain Leary, a belligerent 
and humorous Irishman, to the scene with the 
Adams, 

The Germans now considered that they 
owned the islands, and they set out to quell 
"the rebels" — that is, the Samoans. They 
sailed down the coast to bombard the villages. 
Leary stuck by his guns. He refused to recog- 
nize either the Germans or Tamasese. He got 
between the Germans and their targets. He 
was certainly guilty of Use majeste himself. 

The affair got worse. The Germans tried 
to storm the Samoan camp and were repulsed 
with great loss. In a fury, they then declared 
martial law, with edicts prophetic of later days. 
"The crime of inciting German troops by any 
means, as, for instance, informing them of 
proclamations by the enemy, was punishable 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 269 

with death; that of publishing or secretly dis- 
tributing anything, whether printed or writ- 
ten, bearing on the war, and that of calling or 
attending a public meeting, unless permitted, 
with prison or deportation." These rules they 
declared applied to Americans and English as 
well as natives, including the consuls. 

The British consul flung back a flat defiance 
and three American warships arrived very 
quickly under Captain Hand to discuss the 
affair. What the end might have been, no- 
body knows. For a while the brokers on 
'change were watching the tickers in New 
York and London for news of the first shot 
meaning war, when a hurricane came out of 
the West and threw practically the whole flo- 
tilla in splinters on the beach, and Bismarck 
was put to the necessity of disavowing the 
whole game. Still there is no record of iron 
crosses being distributed to the warriors of the 
chivalrous Mataafa, who, when they saw their 
enemies drowning before their eyes, plunged 
in and saved them by the hundred. 



270 DKAMATIC MOMENTS 

But he could not withdraw object lesson 
number one, of which Stevenson said "the 
German breach of faith was public and ex- 
press ; it must have been deliberately premedi- 
tated: and it was resented in the States as a 
deliberate insult." And caused him to make 
further remarks which, if taken to heart in 
Berlin, would have saved a world of trouble. 
One was with regard to the German consul: 
"If the object of diplomacy be the organiza- 
tion of failure in the midst of hate, he was a 
great diplomatist." 

The other was equally penetrating: 

"The German flag might wave over her puppet 
unquestioned, but there is a law of human nature 
which diplomatists should be taught at school, and 
it seems they are not: that men can tolerate base 
injustice, but not the combination of injustice and 
subterfuge. Hence the chequered career of the 
thimble-rigger." 

The second warning the United States re- 
ceived of German ambitions was more direct 
and more dangerous. It recalled the archaic 
but more frank declaration of the regal combi- 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 271 

nation of 1823, when the King of Prussia had 
joined with the Emperors of Europe for the 
avowed purpose of suppressing all republics 
in general, and those in South America in par- 
ticular. That "convention" we never held up 
against the Kaiser, because it was an insanity 
prevalent at the time in all Europe, and the 
natural hang-over from the era of absolute 
monarchs from which that continent was just 
emerging. But the year 1898 was an entirely 
different matter. 

William McKinley had determined to recog- 
nize and establish the independence of the 
island of Cuba. For a century the Royal 
Spanish Government had failed to produce 
anything there except riot, anarchy, misery, 
and confusion. War was impending. This 
appeared to the councils of Potsdam to be an 
opportune moment to assert themselves, and 
to acquaint the world with three or four self- 
evident but neglected facts. One was that the 
pretention of the United States that affairs in 
America were her sole concern was an imperti- 



272 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

nence and a dead letter, not to be recognized by 
an omnipotent sovereign holding dominion 
under high heaven; another was that a "de- 
bating society," that ridiculous form of gov- 
ermnent, a democracy, which by its very exist- 
ence was an insult to Majesty, should be 
taught the respect due a legitimate queen- 
regent. And the third was the familiar axiom 
that no affair of importance should be under- 
taken anywhere in the world without consult- 
ing the German Army and the German Kaiser. 
So it is reliably reported that Von Holle- 
ben, the German Ambassador, and Von Hen- 
gelmiiller, his Austrian understudy, convened 
the Diplomatic Corps in Washington under 
instructions from Berlin to have the Yankees 
presented with an order beginning and ending 
with the single word ''Verhoten'' This pro- 
gram would have been carried through, and 
the rough-riders have found themselves con- 
fronted with an entirely different proposition, 
except for one obstacle — a constant and obsti- 
nate obstacle, beginning even then to be re- 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 273 

garded by the Kaiser as the one fountain of all 
evil and sacrilege in the world — to-wit, the 
navy of England. Sir Julian Pauncefote in- 
sisted that England could make no such ar- 
rangement — must be left free to act as circum- 
stances might dictate. Feeling pretty sure 
that these circumstances would dictate an un- 
expected visit to Heligoland in case the Ger- 
man fleet happened to be out chastising the 
shade of the immortal ISIonroe, the meeting 
concluded to confine their offices to a pohte re- 
monstrance, which was reported in an article 
in the World's Work in this wise : 

"Said the six ambassadors: 'We hope for 
humanity's sake that you will not go to war.' 
Said JSIr. McKinley, in reply : *We hope if we 
do go to war that you will understand that it is 
for humanity's sake.' The best evidence of 
how this conclusion satisfied the Kaiser is con- 
tained in his own words : *If I had only had a 
fleet, I would have taken Uncle Sam by the 
scruff of the neck.' " 

But the Kaiser's last card had not yet been 



274 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

played. He did have a formidable squadron 
in Asiatic waters, with instructions which can 
only be guessed at, but from subsequent pro- 
ceedings pretty well imagined. Admiral Von 
Diederich headed this squadron to Manila, and 
began his pleasantries shortly after the defeat 
of the Spanish Navy there. Admiral Dewey, 
the soul of naval etiquette, but no Polish peas- 
ant, was at first unable to understand manoeuv- 
res originating in the conception that the Kais- 
er's orders were sufficient reason for any action 
on earth. Dewey was blockading the harbour 
and, by the rules of the sea, as well as by the 
established code of International Law, no ves- 
sels of any kind could enter except by his 
permission. Von Diederich sailed the Irene in 
without as much as "with your leave." Dewey 
knew he was discourteous, but supposed he was 
ignorant. However, when the Cormoran fol- 
lowed suit, the Admiral brought her to with 
solid shot across the bow, and then pretty soon 
the premeditation behind this affair began to 
develop. Dewey casually mentioned that it 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 275 

was hardly customary for a friendly squadron 
visiting a blockaded port on the eve of hostili- 
ties to come in force greater than the blockader 
commanded. Von Diederich haughtily replied 
that such were the Kaiser's orders. 

Doubtless it was also the Kaiser's orders 
which induced the German sailor to threaten 
the Philippine auxiliaries of the United States, 
and openly to send supplies to the besieged 
garrison. This last act brought affairs to a 
head. Dewey was a diplomat. As such he 
knew the proper way to deal with this particu- 
lar manifestation. His message was : 

"Say to Admiral Von Diederich that if he 
wants a fight, he can have it now !" 

Von Diederich wanted the fight. But he 
did not want any unknown quantities about it. 
So he sent over to the English commander, 
Captain Chichester, riding at anchor in the 
vicinity, and asked what he would do if Von 
Diederich interfered with Dewey. Chiches- 
ter's answer was discouraging, a naval corol- 
lary to Sir Julian's diplomacy. It was to the 



276 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

effect that he knew, and that Dewey knew, 
what he would do. 

To test this remark the German lined up in 
menacing array when Dewey steamed in to 
open the attacks on the forts. Chichester, 
smiling, pulled up anchor, and casually sailed 
in between. 

Diplomacy is no less diplomacy because it 
is conducted on shipboard and not in a cabinet 
in the Wilhelmstrasse. 

The first warning signal was in Samoa. 
The second at Manila. On the third occasion 
the Kaiser had the rank misfortune to have 
Theodore Roosevelt to deal with. In such af- 
fairs Roosevelt has nothing in common with 
"the reign of chatter." Congress never found 
this out until years later when the facts were 
published in the "Life of John Hay." 

To the Prussian mind a particularly favour- 
able occasion had arisen for a test of the 
Monroe Doctrine. Their invariable formula 
for acquiring any desirable property, followed 
to the letter in all of their little defensive en- 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 277 

terprises including the bombardment of Bel- 
grade, is very clever. It ought to hoodwink 
and satisfy everybody. It is an astonishing 
thing that it does not. No German can under- 
stand it. Take any demand, provided it is 
absolutely unreasonable, frame it in the most 
arrogant and lordly manner possible, and throw 
it into the territory. If it is not acquiesced in 
by sunset, march a "defensive" army into the 
place, or start a "defensive" bombardment. 
What could be more reasonable, or more con- 
vincing? Particularly since objection on the 
part of any one is conclusive proof that he be- 
longs to an inferior race. 

Venezuelans owed the Germans some money. 
The Germans had "claims" against them. 
Claims constitute the principal commodity as 
well as supply the principal topic of all talk — 
social, pohtical, or merely casual — in this inter- 
esting country. But even a Venezuela claim 
has this in common with the ordinary variety. 
It has two sides. It is capable of producing a 
difference of opinion concerning its validity 



278 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

and volume. Of course, any one will have to 
agree, however, that a claim held by the Kaiser 
is another matter. For, obviously, there exists 
no living hrnnan, not to mention Venezuelan 
being, capable of doubting the Kaiser's de- 
cision upon any subject, much less a claim. 
Since Venezuela had the audacity to delay and 
dispute payment a great opportunity had ar- 
rived. Out went the demand, and hard upon 
it came the invincible Armada. 

John Hay, Secretary of State, taking note 
of this affair, pointed out that the United 
States had an ancient rule, by which they set 
great store, to the effect that no excuse would 
do for invading American soil. The Kaiser 
politely replied that if he found it necessary 
to take Venezuelan territory it would only be i 
for "temporary" occupation. 

In an appendix to Mr. William Roscoe 
Thayer's Life of John Hay, Mr. Roosevelt 
describes what happened then as follows : 

"I also became convinced that Germany in- 
tended to seize some Venezuelan harbour and 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 2T9 

turn it into a strongly fortified place of arms, 
on the model of Kiauchau, with a view to ex- 
ercising some degree of control over the future 
Isthmian Canal, and over South American af- 
fairs generally. 

*Tor some time the usual methods of diplo- 
matic intercourse were tried. Germany de- 
clined to agree to arbitrate the question at is- 
sue between her and Venezuela, and declined 
to say that she would not take possession of 
Venezuelan territory, merely saying that such 
possession would be ''temporary" — which 
might mean anything. I finally decided that 
no useful purpose would be served by further 
delay, and I took action accordingly. I as- 
sembled our battle fleet (there were more than 
fifty ships including every battleship and de- 
stroyer we had), under Admiral Dewey, near 
Porto Rico, for "manoeuvres," with instruc- 
tions that the fleet should be kept in hand and 
in fighting trim, and should be ready to sail at 
an hour's notice. The fact that the fleet was 
in West Indian waters was of course generally 



280 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

known ; but I believe that the Secretary of the 
Navy, and Admiral Dewey, and perhaps his 
Chief of Staff, and the Secretary of State, 
John Hay, were the only persons who knew 
about the order for the fleet to be ready to sail 
at an hour's notice. I told John Hay that I 
would now see the German Ambassador, Herr 
von Holleben, myself, and that I intended to 
bring matters to an early conclusion. Our 
navy was in very efficient condition, being su- 
perior to the German navy. 

"I saw the Ambassador, and explained that 
in view of the presence of the German squad- 
ron on the Venezuelan coast I could not per- 
mit longer delay in answering my request for 
an arbitration, and that I could not acquiesce 
in any seizure of Venezuelan territory. The 
Ambassador responded that his Government 
could not agree to arbitrate, and that there was 
no intention to take "permanent" possession of 
Venezuelan territory. I answered that Kiau- 
chau was not a "permanent" possession of Ger- 
many's — that I understood that it was merely ^ 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 281 

held by a ninety-nine years' lease; and that I 
did not intend to have another Kiauchau, held 
by similar tenure, on the approach to the 
Isthmian Canal. The Ambassador repeated 
that his government would not agree to arbi- 
trate. I then asked him to inform his govern- 
ment that if no notification for arbitration came 
within a certain specified number of days I 
should be obliged to order Dewey to take his 
fleet to the Venezuelan coast and see that the 
German forces did not take possession of any 
territory. He expressed very grave concern, 
and asked me if I realized the serious conse- 
quences that would follow such action; conse- 
quences so serious to both countries that he 
dreaded to give them a name. I answered that 
I had thoroughly counted the cost before I de- 
cided on the step, and asked him to look at the 
map, as a glance would show him that there 
was no spot in the world where Germany in 
the event of a conflict with the United States 
would be at a greater disadvantage than in the 
Caribbean Sea. 



282 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

"'A few days later the Ambassador came to 
see me, talked pleasantly on several subjects, 
and rose to go. I asked him if he had any an- 
swer to make from his government to my re- 
quest, and when he said no, I informed him that 
in such event it was useless to wait as long as I 
had intended, and that Dewey would be or- 
dered to sail twenty-four hours in advance of 
the time I had set. He expressed deep appre- 
hension, and said that his government would 
not arbitrate. However, less than twenty-four 
hours before the time I had appointed for 
cabling the order to Dewey, the Embassy noti- 
fied me that His Imperial Majesty the Ger- 
man Emperor had directed him to request me 
to undertake the arbitration myself. I felt, 
and publicly expressed, great gratification at 
this outcome, and great appreciation of the 
course the German Government had finally 
agreed to take. Later I received the consent 
of the German Government to have the arbi- 
tration undertaken by the Hague Tribunal, 
and not by me." 



IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 283 

Von HoUeben was recalled in disgrace by the 
Kaiser and dismissed from the Diplomatic 
Service. 

There is one other interesting side light on 
this whole affair. In the American navy there 
were then as there are now many officers with 
German names and lineage. They were then 
as now patriotic Americans and Mr. Roosevelt 
took particular pains that in so far as their 
naval fitness allowed these men were in service 
on the battle fleet under Dewey so that the 
Kaiser might get the most unmistakable evi- 
dence that any dependence he placed on hy- 
phenism here would cost him dear. 

These matters, and many more — such as the 
thwarted effort of the Kaiser to establish a 
naval base at the entrance of the Gulf of 
Mexico, and his abortive attempt to purchase 
two ''private" harbours on the Pacific Ocean — 
these matters and many more constitute the 
working basis upon which American distrust 
of the protagonists of "Kultur" was built, long 
before the Lusitania. Those interested in 



284 DRAMATIC MOMENTS 

John Hay's keen perception of the danger 
should read the chapter of William Roscoe 
Thayer's life of the great statesman, who 
"would rather be the dupe of China than the 
chum of the Kaiser." It shows that he put 
his finger on each and every certain sign of 
Teuton duplicity and propaganda, not forget- 
ting the German- American traitors enrolled 
under Prince Henry's banner. Of these he 
said: 

"The prime motive of every German- Ameri- 
can is hostility to every country in the world, 
including America, which is not friendly to 
Germany. * * * " 

It is small wonder, that knowing what he 
knew, Roosevelt wanted no time wasted wait- 
ing for "proofs." Proofs a-plenty had been 
written large before ever a gun was fired. 



THE END 



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